


Cityscape

by Gross_Sodas



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Alternate Universe - Office, F/F, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Well Hajime and Mahiru work at an office, more like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gross_Sodas/pseuds/Gross_Sodas
Summary: Hajime Hinata lives in the city and it feels to him like he always has. He likes the city sure, but all his days seem to be blending together. There's no real variation. But after bumping into someone new, Nagito Komaeda, things might change.
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito, Koizumi Mahiru/Saionji Hiyoko
Comments: 16
Kudos: 72





	1. Chapter 1

The pavement was cold. It always was, so this wasn’t necessarily a remarkable discovery. In fact it wasn’t really a discovery at all, just an observation. An observation that really meant nothing at all. 

The streets were semi-busy, it would be a half-truth to call them either empty or full. Semi-busy, and Hajime would leave it at that. He was on his way home from work, leaving tired as always. Every step he took felt like he was lugging another pound of flesh with a brand new pair of flashy cement shoes to the river. 

Needless to say, Hajime just wanted to go home. 

So he stood staring at the crosswalk light, waiting for it to turn green. It was tempting to just walk ahead instead of waiting, the semi-busy streets definitely would allow for him to have enough time to cross. Besides, the thing always took forever to turn anyways. He was just very lucky that the path between his office building and his apartment had one of those lights, you know? 

He took a deep breath, or at least attempted to. Hajime more so gave a groan that sounded strained. He remained staring at the crosswalk light, waiting for it to change.

Hajime mindlessly looked down at his watch, the time was around seven twenty. Hajime didn’t exactly know why he wore a watch, he was always annoyed with not being able to tell the exact time down to the minute on the damn thing. It was more just like a habit at this point he guessed, maybe an attempt to fit the more professional image he wanted to present at his job? 

Whatever, it didn’t matter. Hajime looked at the time on his phone. 

Seven twenty-three. 

He felt better in knowing that for no reason. 

Hajime checked the crosswalk light again, almost hesitantly. He was certain that whatever he saw wouldn’t be what he would like to see. But instead, the light had turned green. 

He smiled slightly before he stepped out onto the street. 

The walk home from his office to his apartment building, which Hajime liked better than the walk from his apartment building to his office, always seemed to have a different air about it. Sure, the morning walk always had birds chirping and chiming along to the nonexistent tune of the rising sun. But that late afternoon walk always had a calm chillness to it, there were always more people out in these walks. Hajime didn’t exactly consider himself a people person, and he certainly wasn’t a very social person either unless the situation seemed to demand it. But he liked seeing all the people going about their days, earlier in his life he probably would have said the exact opposite of that, hating seeing to see people showing any signs of higher achievement on anything. He liked to think he got past that though, and came to peace that sometimes people take different paths throughout the world. 

There certainly is an emphasis on liked though, as Hajime still found himself drowning in a sea of jealousy and washing along the shore of some emotion that’s not exactly contentment but not exactly resentment either. 

He didn’t think about that much though. 

And he did not think about that at all on his walks, which seemed to hold a kind of sacredness to him that he refused to address. 

So he kept going home. 

Hajime was getting home a bit later than usual today, as he decided to stay at work later. He mainly just talked today to the office manager, Mahiru, who he considered himself to be good friends with. She decided that she wanted to propose to her girlfriend who she had been dating for like, five years? Realizing that made him slow down a bit in his pace. Hajime remembered hearing about their first date, and joking that she was going to dump the girl within three months. Guess he was wrong about that. He was probably wrong about lots of other things too. He never had met the acclaimed girlfriend of five years, but from his Mahiru’s descriptions he knew that she was quick to judge and quite mean. Mahiru told Hajime that she probably would give Hajime some nickname as soon as she saw him, and that he probably wouldn’t like whatever it was very much. But it seemed that he would never receive said nickname, as the girlfriend never made an appearance when he and Mahiru went out for drinks on Fridays. He sort of thought the girl wasn’t even real, but after seeing that engagement ring today, all of those ideas went out of his head. 

Hajime decided he hadn’t changed a lot in those five years from when Mahiru had her first date to now, when Mahiru is proposing. In fact, he still found himself as single as ever and still living in the same apartment.  
Hajime kept thinking about his life the past five years when he turned the final corner onto the street his apartment building was on, when he felt himself hit something. At first he had thought he ran into a wall or a street pole, but the object he ran into wasn’t exactly hard. Sure, sure it was firm but it wasn’t made of steel or any other metal. He then looked down, mainly to check his shoes. He polished them the other day and was really hoping that they didn’t scuff. 

To his dismay, there was a slight scuff on the middle of the toe on his right shoe. 

And to his surprise, he found out what he had hit while he had turned the corner. 

He hit a person, and a very startled looking person at that. Which was understandable, as Hajime’s knocking into them caused them to fall to the floor. 

The person shook his head, almost in confusion about what had happened. 

“Oh! Sorry there, didn’t see you I guess.” Hajime offered a hand to help the person up. 

The person took Hajime’s hand, and got up. “No, no. Its fine, you have to say that it's my fault anyways.” The person laughed slightly, either nervously or just to diffuse the situation Hajime couldn’t tell. “I’m sort of lost! I just moved here and I can’t seem to find my apartment complex anywhere.” The person waved his hand in the air seemingly to punctuate his sentence. 

“Hey, maybe I can help you? You know, to make it up for knocking you down to the ground? I’ve lived around here for a while, so what’s your apartment building called?” Hajime replied, he felt the need to make it up to this person in some way or another. Besides, there was only like four apartment complexes around here, so it wouldn’t be that hard to find the one this guy lived at anyways. 

The person gave a smile. “Thanks, that’s really nice of you. I live at… I think it's called Ridge Park? It's only my fourth day out here, so sorry that amount of little information is all I can provide.” 

Ridge Park? Hajime knew where Ridge Park was, in fact, that's where he lived. He then said that exact thing to this person. 

“We’re neighbors then, aren’t we? Guess I should introduce myself if we live in the same building, right? I’m Nagito.” The person, who Hajime now knew who’s name was Nagito said. 

“Okay cool, nice to meet you Nagito.” Hajime smiled. “So Ridge Park is just down that way,” Hajime pointed down the street, “here I’ll walk with you down.” He smiled, wanting to seem friendly.

“I think you’re forgetting something here. Well, maybe you aren’t! As I’m probably not worthy of an introduction anyways.” 

“Oh, right! I’m Hajime.”

* * *

Life continued on, Hajime didn’t feel as if some enlightening and life changing experience had come of this chance encounter with his new neighbor. But he couldn’t help but feel that in some way he should have felt something like that. It was as if something was off about Nagito, something he couldn’t place in some sense of the universe. 

In fact, maybe that was the enlightenment he felt that he should be experiencing. But Hajime still refused to accept it as such. 

It was just the way Nagito spoke that seemed to be drilling a hole with a drill far deeper and deeper into the fuzzy and messy grey matter that called itself Hajime’s brain. The aspect that Hajime seemed to be stuck on was the fact that Nagito underlyingly seemed to pinpoint himself as... well Hajime couldn’t even place that! Nagito seemed to have some way of expressing himself in such a casual negative nature that seemed puzzling. 

What stuck Hajime the most out of all the words that Nagito said, had to be their conversation in the elevator. 

“Ah! Hajime, I live on the fifth floor, apartment 5-F actually. What floor do you live on? That is if you even want to give out that kind of information to the likes of me.” Nagito almost had cheerfully said as he entered the elevator behind Hajime. 

Hajime pressed the button for the fifth floor as soon as he heard Nagito mention it, habit he guessed from being in too many multi-floored buildings all the time. 

“I live on the seventh floor.” It was funny that Nagito had moved into apartment 5-F, as Hajime lived in apartment 7-F. It wasn’t relevant and there was no real punchline to the situation, it was just amusing how close the two apartments seemed to be. But the similarities were unnoticeable to anyone passing a glance, and they didn’t live on the same floor.  
“Seven is a lucky number.” Nagito smiled and made another motion that Hajime didn’t keep track of. 

They stayed in the elevator in silence for a pause, the pause seemed longer than it was by seventy years. 

“So having fun in the city yet?” Hajime’s discontentment in the silence pushed him to break it. 

Nagito shook his head, and made a slight noise that could not be categorized as a sigh but then again could not be categorized as anything else. “No, not yet at least. I can’t seem to find anything around here.” Nagito paused to let in a soft laugh. “But I bet that was obvious seeing as the likes of me can’t even find my own apartment!” 

“Well the city can be sorta confusing for anyone new. I guess. That’s not just a trait limited to you.” Hajime was only half listening really. 

“Hmm, maybe-.” Nagito paused, seeming to almost not finish his initial thought. Hajime already thought that felt off for this guy. “Hey, Hajime?” 

“Uh yeah?”

“Would you mind showing me around sometime? I don’t really have any friends or anything, so I’ll be free whenever you would want to deal with someone like me.” Nagito smiled again. 

Hajime wasn’t sure if he liked that smile or not. But he just assumed the slight uneasiness he felt from it came from how Nagito must be nervous trying to meet people in the new city or something. Hajime honestly did not care enough to spend more than a possible ten seconds analyzing that smile within the moment. 

“Oh, sure I guess I can-.”

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. 

“Thank you for your kindness today, Hajime! I hope I get to see you around.” Nagito walked off the elevator. Hajime didn’t say anything in response, but if that was just due to the elevator door closing or just because he didn’t have anything in actuality to say he wasn’t so sure. 

The next day at work he mentioned this all to Mahiru, which he might have just done more in some aspect to get her to stop talking about how well her proposal went and how she was so excited and how she was going to have a perfect marriage and how Hajime absolutely has to bring a date to her wedding she wasn’t going to allow him to be all sad and moping around the other couples and ugh it was all too much at once for him. But deeper down Hajime just suspected that he wanted to talk about this new, different possible aspect in his life.

Hajime felt lately that he had found himself within a deeper internal rut, a situation where all the days seemed to melt together as if the calendar was only frost on the car windshield once someone turned on the defroster. This rut was not something that felt important enough to address previously, or even something he might have consciously known. But the new element within the thing had just highlighted this. 

“Are you going to take him out and show him around today then Hajime? You know you’ll be ditching our routine of getting drinks down at the bar every Friday, which is pretty unreliable of you.” 

Mahiru only half meant what she said. Any other time she most likely would have been pissed at getting blown off for some random stranger, but Hajime knew that she most likely wanted to start planning her wedding as soon as she could and this would clear up a block of time. 

Hajime decided to play along with her poorly feigned annoyance and say something he knew Mahiru would dislike more than getting ditched.

“I could bring him down to the bar with me, you know.” Hajime cracked a slight smile.

“You would not!” Mahiru gasped in slightly more dramatics than she felt. And she was right, Hajime wouldn’t bring Nagito to the bar during his weekly drinks with Mahiru unless he felt like they were becoming pretty good friends. But Hajime did not feel that, because he did not know the guy. 

Hajime snorted in response. “Maybe I’ll just take him down around the city tonight.” 

That seemed to be the end of the conversation about Hajime’s new neighbor though, as Mahiru weaseled the conversation back to her wedding ideas.

* * *

It was earlier than usual when Hajime left work following that long conversation about possible wedding colors with Mahiru. She had decided on gold and white in her head already, but Hajime felt she was just refusing to admit it just yet. And whatever, that was fine.  
Hajime just didn’t want to really listen to it just yet. He wasn’t sure why though, yeah yeah he was happy for Mahiru and her girlfriend- well fiance actually. Well he guessed he was happy for them. It wasn’t as if Hajime thought he reveled in the sadness of his friends, well he wouldn’t if he had more than one that is, and he wouldn’t even be sure what he would do if Mahiru’s girlfriend had rejected the proposal. Sure sure, he would offer support to Mahiru and act as he thought a good friend would act. He’d probably end up meeting the girlfriend sooner than he’s going to at this rate, Mahiru would probably ask him to help move all her stuff out of their shared apartment, because he had a feeling Mahiru would be too proud to ask her girlfriend to leave so she would just leave herself. 

But that’s not what happened, and Hajime felt a little sick devoting his precious walk home thinking about something that would probably make his friend very sad.

No, really sad was just what he used to describe it in a way that just made him feel a bit less guilty about thinking about a breakup. Hajime consciously, due to the fact it would be too nice to say that he unconsciously, knew that Mahiru would have been completely destroyed as a person if her proposal had been anything but accepted last night. 

Not wanting to think about it anymore, and due to the fact he did actually end up ditching Mahiru for drinks, Hajime just walked on.

The streets were busier today, which was chalked up to it being a Friday this time around. He didn’t notice any faces in the crowd that he knew. He wasn’t sure if he was expecting to, it just felt like he should and he wasn’t sure why. 

He felt like he should check the time, and he did. He didn’t forgo checking his wristwatch this time around either, and went around the same annoyance with it. He checked his phone for the time. 

It was five thirty three. 

Hajime noticed the scuff on his shoe again, and was sort of angry with himself for not polishing it out as soon as he got home yesterday. But he sort of smiled at the scuff as well, but that was something that went unnoticed in the grandose of his inner psyche. He didn’t even stop to think once more about Nagito and the events of yesterday.

Well he didn’t stop to think about the events until he did. 

He saw Nagito across the street, obviously trying to read a street sign but looking far more confident than he had previously. Although Hajime was probably just projecting that Nagito looked more confident, because Nagito certainly did not learn the city any better in one day. Was anyone even capable of that? 

Hajime crossed the street. 

Wait? Why did he cross the street?

If he crossed the street here he certainly wouldn’t be on his way back to his apartment. 

But if he didn’t go back to his apartment he probably wouldn’t be able to catch Nagito to show him around if he was already off somewhere. 

But wait! Did Hajime actually really care about that? Somewhere in his mind he thought he was just going to end up using Nagito as a lie so he didn’t have to get drunk just to avoid Mahiru and her stupid wedding. 

Stupid wedding? Ugh, he thought he was over this whole line of thought that just made a trip around the block and knocked on the door again. No, Hajime can’t come out to play today, stupid thought, he’s now too busy attempting to avoid Nagito. 

But did he really want to avoid Nagito? Hajime assumed that on some level he just already made the assumption he wouldn’t be seeing him today, but here he was seeing him right in the light of day. 

Well if Nagito just happened to notice Hajime as he was passing by, Hajime couldn’t be rude to him. Hajime was probably the only person Nagito knew in the big, big bad city. He couldn’t just let a little lost puppy run around the streets alone, could he? 

Maybe he could.

No, no he couldn’t, wouldn’t. 

Then again? 

No, no. 

Hajime ended this train of thought.  
Heh, Nagito kind of did look a bit like a dog. It was probably the hair, so unruly and stark white. It seemed to remind Hajime of a samoyed, he’d say a maltese but something stuck in his head that he couldn’t see Nagito anywhere like the mediterranan. 

“Ah! Hajime!”

Nagito tore Hajime out of his thoughts, seems the big bad city didn’t provide enough cover.

Hajime didn’t think he was angry about it though, but he wasn’t the most pleased either. 

“Oh hey.” Hajime stopped walking, since Nagito yelled his name while he was slightly walking past him. It gave Nagito a chance to run to his side. “I thought you would be in your apartment all day.”

Nagito looked shocked. “How nice of you to think of scum like me! I’m truly honored.” His expression changed to one of a content smile by the end though. Although the fit between his words and the expression put Hajime a little bit on edge if not anything else. 

“Heh… yeah.” Hajime only spoke due to the fact Nagito looked like he wanted a response. “So where are you headed? Trying to find some place again?” 

“Yes actually! I hope you don’t take my own looking around as an insult, since I asked you to show me around, but my disgusting curiosity got the better of me.” Nagito looked back at the street sign for a moment, then back at Hajime. He seemed puzzled, and Hajime finally made the decision that he was projecting the confidence onto him. 

“Well, you know what they say curiosity killed the cat.” Hajime shrugged, he knew he would end up offering to show the guy to wherever he was going in a minute. It just seemed like he was getting a little enjoyment out of the buildup to it. 

“But satisfaction brought it back. It seems this rabies and flea ridden cat will just die in the street though.” Nagito sighed and looked down the block for a split second.

Hajime probably would have missed it if he was not looking straight at Nagito. 

“Well, I’ll help you find where you want to go.” The conversation had taken a left down the alley of strange analogies and Hajime was not the biggest fan of getting stabbed there. 

Hajime received a smile in response. “Thank you! I hope this isn’t too much of an inconvenience for you, I see you have a briefcase today and are probably off to something important.” 

The briefcase in question was just forgotten at the office yesterday, and held nothing important in it. Hajime only started to use it because everyone else there had one. He guessed it possessed the same logic and reasoning as the watch did.

Not wanting to address how his briefcase was only full of old copies of celebrity gossip magazines and only a few papers that had to be filled out for his job, Hajime just asked Nagito where he wanted to go. 

“Right, I probably shouldn’t be taking up more of your time than needed.” Hajime was literally heading home hoping to catch reruns of some sitcom. “I’m looking for the library.” 

Ah! The library! Hajime knew where the library was, and it actually wasn’t that far from here. It was kind of a surprise that Nagito hadn’t found it himself if that’s really where he wanted to go. 

“Oh sure, follow me. It’s just down this way.” 

The library was in the center of the city, and just seeing the building completely changed the aura around the rest of the area. It was heavily inspired by a mix of Gothic and Roman architecture. But it wouldn’t be right to call it either of those. It was white and had columns in front, but it also had the high ceilings that were a staple of gothic architecture. 

Hajime was positive that a bunch of taxpayers paid a lot of money to make the building look old. 

He was also sure that he wasn’t an architect either and might have been getting his styles confused. But he was positive that wouldn’t matter when talking about the library, because it was just, in lack of better phrasing a lot. 

Hajime only thought about it because he really wanted to see Nagito’s reaction. 

And he did have a reaction to it, which was more of a subdued gasp. “I didn’t expect it to look… so like that.” 

There was a quiet pause as they walked up the steps together. 

Hajime on instinct held the door for Nagito. “Usually libraries are more modern.”

* * *

Hajime said to Nagito that he would go wander around in some random section and they could meet up by the book checkout in maybe an hour. 

This prompted a string of protests, something or another about how Nagito was insignificant dirt. Hajime tuned him out pretty quickly, already seeming to get used to this quirk in Nagito’s personality. 

“Well I’m getting hungry and being with you gives me an excuse to not eat alone.” It was getting around the time that Hajime would already be two appetizers at the bar with Mahiru. So Hajime wasn’t lying or anything, but he also had an ulterior motive he supposed.

Hajime just really wanted to make sure that Nagito made it back to his apartment without getting lost. 

Hajime had no clue on why he felt this way, but he certainly was not going to dwell on it. Besides, it would probably be fun to finally go hang out with someone else for once. 

It seemed like it took forever, but Nagito finally agreed to the dinner plans. He then went off somewhere in the library. 

Hajime then decided to go the opposite direction, and quickly came to, not regret but he really was not the happiest with that decision at first. 

He found himself within the romance novels.

Within itself, wasn’t that bad of an occurrence. It was just the timing that cemented the regret really. 

Whatever he had no desire to dwell on it, no matter how deeply he sort of did want to dwell on it. 

Hajime sighed, and lazily ran his fingers over the spines of the books on the shelf most level with his arm. Dewey decimal system be damned. At random he tipped his ring finger onto a top of some book. It promptly toppled over and fell to the floor with a loud thud. Hajime gritted his teeth slightly in reaction, and quickly surveyed the surrounding area to make sure that nobody noticed or was too bothered. He was expecting the worst, at least one person looking slightly annoyed at him. It looked that no one was bothered enough to even notice the sound in the first place.  
He picked the book up, it was actually a book he had read before. He ended up reading this book sometime over the past summer, it had taken maybe a week to get through at most. Hajime had found it cute actually. It was pretty simple in terms of the plot, and if he was remembering right he searched around to see if the author ever published a sequel. If there was one, he never found it. 

The book was called Better Left Written and Hidden, which really was a mouthful to say. It revolved around a girl, her name was Samantha, and she kept a diary. Well one day her crush and roommate found the diary, and the roommate decided to keep that a secret. 

The book ended with the roommate confessing to finding the diary after they actually started to go on dates and stuff, and Samantha just accepted it. The two seemed happy and that was just the end, although Hajime did think that the ending kind of had a rushed feeling to it. Maybe the publisher was really pushing for a certain deadline or something? 

Hajime thumbed the closed pages before haphazardly flipping to a random page. It landed on page sixty-nine and Hajime stifled a giggle. 

He picked the story back up from that point and just started reading on, remembering how cliché the story was. It was kind of nice actually, to have something play out exactly as you wanted and expected it to. Not everything has to be revolutionary, Hajime thought, sometimes you just want a fun narrative. 

Besides, he thought the real strength was in the author’s writing style. Just the way he used words and played around with metaphor and simile. Hajime never really had a passion for novels, or literature, or anything really like that, but something about this one author’s way of writing made him really appreciate it.

* * *

Time got lost within the pages of a good book, the time ticked away at the clock with absolutely no consideration for anyone around it or itself for that matter. 

After looking at his watch for a second though, Hajime felt a sense of urgency. He almost dropped the book onto the floor to bolt to the library checkout. He slammed it back into the shelf where he thought it went instead, in the back of his head he knew this would be an annoyance for any librarian. 

He started out speed walking to the checkout area, but slowed down somewhere.  
Why did he care so much whether or not he walked Nagito home?

Well, more than home actually he said he was hungry earlier and that did not change. He still wanted to drag Nagito to dinner. 

But why? 

They just met, and suddenly Hajime felt concerned about Nagito’s ability to get himself home? Hajime wondered if he felt concerned over Nagito safety? These were questions he didn’t really have an answer to, and less time to think over in this current situation as he had to make sure Nagito did not leave yet. 

Eh, Hajime will just say that he wanted a friend besides Mahiru due to not having any. 

The checkout lobby was empty. Well, there were a few employees talking about behind the checkout desk. The checkout lobby was empty of people that Hajime wanted to see, and he considered asking one of the people at the checkout desk if they saw Nagito leave already. Nagito had no reason to wait for Hajime to leave the library, and Hajime had no reason either really. Well, besides this nagging feeling of wanting to that was. 

So Hajime assumed the best and sat down at a bench near the door. 

He waited.

He did not wait for a long time though, about ten minutes later the person of Hajime’s current interest walked into view. Nagito looked like he didn’t notice Hajime yet, but Hajime suspected he would be noticed sooner rather than later. He was carrying a book, it looked old and worn. 

Most importantly though, it looked heavy. 

Hajime wondered what it was briefly, and then realized that if he asked he might be told. 

Nagito did not notice Hajime yet, as he started his way over to the checkout counter. Then he stopped, probably realizing he had no library card here. Or maybe he did, Hajime certainly was not watching him during his entire trip to the library. But it was more likely he didn’t have one than he did, he had went off into a section immediately instead of going to the help desk. 

Nagito resumed in walking over to the checkout desk, he said something that Hajime couldn’t hear over the deafening silence of the room. The librarian he spoke to put the book behind the desk, and smiled. Nagito waved to her and then turned to walk away, only slightly pausing when he finally noticed Hajime sitting by the door. 

Then he moved a bit faster over. 

Hajime stood up.

“Sorry trash like me kept you waiting, but I really didn’t expect anyone would be so nice as to actually wait for me.” Nagito smiled, Hajime thought that he probably used a smile to punctuate any sentence. 

Hajime wanted to ask about that book, but didn’t really want to open up his sentence up with that. “It’s fine, I didn’t wait really anyways. I went along and looked at books myself.” 

“That’s good! I’m glad all your time wasn’t wasted on me.” 

Man, Hajime wasn’t so sure he would get used to responding to this guy, everything he said just seemed to file into more of this. 

“So I’m ready to go out to dinner, and I’ve got this restaurant in mind that I want to show you.” Damn, Hajime did not actually have a restaurant in mind that he wanted to show him, why did he say that? 

“How considerate of you! I think I’m getting hungry myself, and I’m sure anything you want to show me would be wonderful.” Nagito replied, he seemed pretty excited now too. 

Hajime decided he would just take Nagito to the restaurant down the street from the bar he always went to. It wasn’t that far and he ate there before, sure he didn’t remember much about them but it couldn’t be that bad.

* * *

The restaurant was simple, some typical family owned diner that was always expected to be there, but the public wouldn’t have been too surprised if the place went under. Well maybe the public was too strong of a generalization, that was really just more how Hajime felt. 

The place was pretty empty, and Hajime was grateful for that. The place’s casual chatter among their other customers came as a comfort, and the staff was pretty fast to get to them after they found a spot to sit as requested by the “please seat yourself” sign. 

Hajime ordered a specialty sandwich of the place, and Nagito ordered some salad. The waitress was nice and said she would have that out in a few minutes. 

“So I saw you almost checked out a book, what was it?” Curiosity was gnawing at Hajime like fleas that Nagito had described earlier. 

“Oh, it was just a large collection of poems I found interesting. I would have checked it out if I had remembered to get a card there. But I’ll probably be back there soon, so it won’t be that long until I get one.” Nagito played with the straw in his glass of water absentmindedly, he still had his attention on Hajime. 

“Oh yeah, do you like libraries? I have to admit I rarely visit them much myself.” 

Nagito nodded. “I visit them all the time. I used to volunteer at one in high school.” His thought was interrupted by a chuckle. “I would read to the kids, but I don’t think they liked me very much. This one girl would always pull my hair.” 

“So I’m guessing you don’t like kids much then?” Hajime replied. 

“They’re fine I guess, I actually considered working as a nanny or a teacher for a while.” 

The waitress returned, Hajime felt that she was there faster than usual. But he didn’t have much of a usual to compare it to anyways.

Nagito started speaking again. “So can I ask why you picked this place, Hajime?” 

“Oh, uh. It's pretty close by the apartments, so I thought you mind end up eating here a lot.” Hajime said after swallowing a bite of his burger, slightly impressed that he was able to think of something so fast. 

Nagito nodded in response, he was chewing and Hajime assumed he didn’t want to be rude or anything. “I’m glad you decided to be so nice as to someone like me and show me around.” 

Hajime let out a noise between a laugh and a sigh. He didn’t mean to, but he did. “You asked me to show you around remember?” 

They focused on eating for a good moment, and by the end of that moment the waitress had dropped the bill off. Nagito went to grab his wallet, but by that time Hajime had already taken the bill up to the counter and paid already. Nagito tried to pay him back, but Hajime refused. He said he took Nagito out, so he could pay for him.

* * *

Hajime walked back to the apartment building with Nagito. Nagito seemed pretty happy and Hajime was content with that. He liked the idea of meeting someone new, and having another person to talk to wasn’t a bad idea. 

They entered the elevator and Hajime pushed the buttons for both floors. 

The elevator ride felt slow, but that might have been because they didn’t talk much in it. Well, besides Nagito thanking Hajime for showing him around today. 

“No problem, just tell me what you wanna’ see and I’ll walk with you to it.” Hajime replied back. 

“You’d really show me around again?” Nagito seemed surprised. “That’s very nice of you.” Nagito wasn’t looking at Hajime, but he assumed there was a smile on his face. 

The elevator beeped, and the doors opened. Nagito said bye before he stepped out and started to walk back to his apartment.

“Wait!” Hajime said, stepping out of the elevator as the doors were closing. His arm almost got caught. 

Nagito turned around, looking understandably confused. He was practically already at his door, he had the key in his hand. 

Hajime walked up to him. “I better get your phone number so you can text me if you want me to show you around. You know, instead of just walking around on the street hoping to run into each other?” Hajime smiled. 

Nagito smiled back, but Hajime couldn’t help but notice… was he maybe blushing a little? He chalked it up to the lighting, though. The lightbulb in this hallway seemed to be dying. 

“Sure, Hajime you can have my number.” Nagito entered his number into Hajime’s phone and Hajime did the same. 

Nagito handed Hajime his phone back, and opened the door to his apartment. He smiled and waved before shutting the door, saying something to the effects of bye again. 

Hajime walked back to the elevator, feeling content.

Once he got in the elevator he checked his phone, he had a message from Mahiru. But he thought that could wait, he wanted to take a nap when he got home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hajime has a talk with Mahiru over brunch.

It was hard to say where the line was drawn between a nap and just actually falling asleep. The difference was in length sure, that was the easy part to pull apart from the question. People say that a perfect nap to improve effectiveness was about ten minutes long, but who would really only take a ten minute nap? So length, while obviously a factor wasn’t exactly what to dwell on. The real problem lurked in the timing, was anything past seven even considered a nap anymore? Hajime decided that didn’t really matter in this current situation though. 

Hajime had woken up at sometime in the morning. He was still in his clothes he wore to work yesterday, and thought that his mouth had some gross taste. He didn’t even make it to his bed either, and now he knew his back would be hurting from how he slept on the couch. Hajime had to say that he was slightly impressed with how he didn’t fall off the couch though. 

Which meant that Hajime’s nap was in fact just him falling asleep. 

He checked his phone, it was eight twelve. 

Hajime groaned while dragging his hand across his face. Today felt off, and he knew exactly why it felt off. He didn’t end up drinking last night, and that’s to say he wasn’t out too late. He glanced back at his phone again, the message from Mahiru from last night was still there. Although it seemed that it had been tripled, which he wasn’t the most eager at looking at.

He looked at them anyway though. 

“What are you doing tomorrow?” The first text read.

The next text was from a couple hours later. “Not replying and ditching me to hang out with some guy is pretty unreliable.” Mahiru probably didn’t actually care that much. If she did she would have sent far more texts in far less of a time frame. 

The last text just was asking Hajime if he wanted to hang out, and to call her if he did for more details. 

He didn’t reply. Well, that was unfair to say. He would reply, eventually. He just didn’t reply in this minute. Besides, his phone was at five percent. Which makes sense due to the fact it was unplugged the entirety of his supposed nap. 

Hajime spent a good second searching for his charging cord. His phone had completely died by the time he found it though, so he made sure to plug it in. 

He felt gross, and decided that taking a shower is higher on the checklist. Before taking his shower though, Hajime stared into his bathroom mirror for a long while. He thought he looked tired, but not a tiredness that could be fixed with more sleep. Hajime wondered if this was a more, internal permanent tired. A tired that existed due to an overarching reason, something that could take a look time to analyze and digest. 

He had a feeling that his stomach acid would become too acidic if he tried though, so he left it at that and moved on.

* * *

The shower was what Hajime thought of as a typical shower. It varied a bit on the smaller side than he thought he would like when he first moved into his apartment, but it worked just fine and eventually he forgot that he even had a slight problem with it in the first place. The tile inside the shower was a sickly, sad shade of seafoam. And Hajime couldn’t get over how much he didn’t like that color for a bathroom. Every time he took a shower that thought gnawed at his mind, well it would be far more true to say that it at least it made a cameo. 

Hajime’s shower was cold, not freezing though. It wasn’t like he purposefully set it in his head to have a cold shower but his lazy twist of the wrist didn’t produce anything that was blazing hot. It didn’t even produce anything lukewarm. The shower did the job of making the gross feeling slightly go away. There was an unspoken acknowledgement that he would feel gross all day. There would also be an unspoken reasoning that this existed due to sleeping on the couch fully clothed in what Hajime had worn for an entire day. It certainly wasn’t the ideal situation, but the world wasn’t going to collapse anytime soon, so he left the bathroom. 

The bathroom wasn’t that far from the bedroom, in fact nothing was really that far from anything in the apartment. That’s not to say it was an abnormally small apartment or anything. It was a perfectly sized apartment for one person. Hajime didn’t really even have guests over, so he had no reason to worry about if there was enough room if another person was in his apartment. He thought that there would be enough space though, but he had no intention to go and test this idea out. Public places worked just fine to hang out in, so there really was no need to even have anyone over in his apartment. Although sometimes Hajime did have to say that the apartment seemed awfully empty. He considered almost adopting a pet once or twice, or thrice or four times or maybe five. No one was counting though, so the number of considerations was lost to time and lost to thought. 

Hajime grabbed his phone and the charging cord on his way to his bedroom. He promptly replugged it in. 

It was eight forty-five. 

Eight forty-five?!? 

Hajime didn’t think he had taken that long of a shower, and thirty minutes seemed far longer than possible. He swore he was only in the shower for about maybe half that time. This passage of time itched at Hajime’s skin, it was a deep itch. One could say that it was right in the subcutaneous tissue. He had no clue why it was such a deep itch though, because he thought he didn’t really care. Was it the fact that he went even more time without responding to Mahiru? Certainly she had to have been annoyed by now. It wouldn’t be a deep annoyance though that would be stretched out over many weeks and months though, Hajime would get an earful about it maybe once or twice. 

Yeah that had to be it. 

Hajime checked his phone battery. It wasn’t dead, which meant it was perfectly capable of making a phone call. His phone had actually charged a decent amount by then, it was around eighty percent. Hajime wanted it at one hundred before he would take it off the charger again, but with this much charged he would definitely call Mahiru. He didn’t think that he actually deeply wanted to hang out with her today, but he would. She probably felt the need to make up for last night’s missing drinks. 

More importantly though, Hajime had a feeling that Mahiru had a more serious intention behind just saying she wanted to hang out. He didn’t have the slightest clue on what that could be though. All he knew was that Mahiru wanted to be called, and that seemed a bit strange for her. Usually she would just spill any details she wanted over text. 

Hajime suddenly felt a little bit bad for ignoring her as much as he had, but it was only a little bit. He had a feeling that this conversation would end up being circled around to her wedding in someway or another, which he wasn’t the most excited about. He was probably just getting asked to go look around at venues or something as boring and mind numbingly annoying as that could be. 

Hajime ended up calling Mahiru, she picked up at around the third ring.

* * *

Mahiru insisted they met up at some restaurant for what Hajime guessed was supposed to be breakfast, or brunch maybe? He had a feeling he would end up ordering a mimosa, he was certain that would be the only alcoholic beverage this place Mahiru picked would be serving at this time. It didn’t help that was his drink of choice, and then he would then end up spewing some excuse saying he was making up for missing out on drinks last night. He had to say though that it would all depend on Mahiru’s mood when they started talking, if Hajime sensed any kind of seriousness he would certainly consider the mimosa a bit more. He just wasn’t exactly sure if he would be considering how many he would order or if he would even bother ordering one at all. 

Maybe he would just stick to the straight orange juice minus the champagne. 

He’d cross that bridge when he came to it, or maybe he’d just swim across the river instead. 

It was sunny out, and it caught in Hajime’s eye. He spent a long time walking with his hand attempting to partially block the horrid sun that was drilling a hole into one of his favorite retinas. But the effort seems to just fall in vain, maybe he should just wear sunglasses. 

He thought for a second and decided he disliked that idea.

The walk to the place Mahiru picked was shorter than expected. Hajime had never been to this place before, but it wasn’t as if he had never heard of it. It was one of those places you no one would really expected to exist. One of those places that looked more like a television set than an actual establishment. One of those places that had a specifically designed charming outside, one filled with plants as far as the eye could see. The restaurant was new, and Hajime only knew this because he had seen how the building it was in had looked before. All the seemingly cozy and well worn details were fabricated to the nines just to draw in the right crowd. The plants didn’t even seem confident in their roots yet, and Hajime thought that it would suck for the owners when all of them died by fall. 

He walked in. 

The place wasn’t packed yet, but Hajime had a feeling that it soon would be. A Saturday brunch crowd would probably filling in as soon as they could, and Hajime guessed he was part of that crowd himself. He officially decided that even though it might be too early for whatever actual criteria there was for brunch, he was there for brunch. The aura of this restaurant and the ideas of their typical customers just confirmed this idea further into his mind.  
Mahiru was sitting in not exactly the back of the restaurant, but it would feel wrong to call where she was sitting in the front of the restaurant. Hajime would say she was seated in the middle, but the place seemed to have no real discernible middle. So he guessed he would just have to say that she was seated in the restaurant, and Hajime could see her from the doorway. She seemed to have some kind of drink, and was busy swirling her straw around it in. There probably wasn’t anything that needed to be stirred in that drink, and she was just doing it for the sake of doing it.

Hajime made his way over, ignoring any staff if they had noticed him. He doubted that any staff had actually noticed him though, as no one actually had seemed to look over in the direction of the door as it swung open. The chairs and tables that this restaurant had looked like those metal ones people kept on their porches or in their gardens, and Hajime wouldn’t doubt that they were the same kind based on the aesthetics the place had already pulled together. But knowing that meant the acknowledgement that sitting here for a long period of time wouldn’t be the most comfortable situation, but Hajime brushed that to the back of his mind. He knew that he would be sitting in that chair for a long period of time. 

“Hajime!” Mahiru said as he pulled the chair out to sit down. She smiled, and something about this smile seemed nicer. That wasn’t to say that her smiles ever seemed mean or un-nice, just there seemed to be a nicer tone to this smile. Hajime couldn’t really describe it, but he noticed it. Mahiru hadn’t stopped talking though, but it would be fair enough to say that Hajime was only half listening, too busy thinking about how her smile seemed. “You’re a bit earlier than I expected you to be.” She punctuated her sentence with completing another circle of her straw in her drink, Hajime still didn’t know what it was. 

Hajime shrugged. “The walk was shorter than I thought it would be.” He looked around slightly for a waiter, him seeing Mahiru already having a drink really made him want a mimosa. 

Mahiru nodded. “Yeah, this place seems like it should be farther away than it is. Doesn’t seem too real where it is.” She took a sip from her straw. “I haven’t been here a lot. I don’t know really, but it just seemed like a good change of pace. At least they have good a good spritz here.” 

“Heh, I see you’re making up for me ditching you last night.” A spritz definitely confirmed this was brunch, even if Hajime already highly suspected it was. He didn’t even realize he had any real doubts it wasn’t until he found out this bit of information. “Might as well join in on that as soon as I see a waiter then.”

Mahiru made a sound close to a hum, but a confident hum. There was no questioning weight behind it. “Let me guess, I bet you’re going to order a mimosa.”

Damn, Mahiru knew him well. It wasn’t as if he was exactly surprised that Mahiru knew him that well, but just slight amusement. Hajime didn’t exactly know why though, they were pretty good friends after all. 

“Yeah, you’ve got me.” Hajime smiled, well not exactly a smile. It was more an expression between a smile and an amused grin.

* * *

It felt like it took a while to even locate an employee. Mahiru eventually spied one out, and promptly ordered that mimosa for Hajime. She asked Hajime if he wanted to look over the menu to see if he would want to order an entree or something of the sort before the waiter was tracked down, so they ordered their food items at the same time. They both equally decided that none of the entrees had sounded that good, so they just ended up picking appetizers to split. Hajime was banking on the mini quiche platter being the star of the two they picked. Mahiru sided the other way though, she just said something about how the chocolate banana bread would have no right having that appealing of a description on the menu if it didn’t hold the role of best appetizer. 

She seemed willing to argue about it too before the items even showed up, and as appealing as that was Hajime had a mimosa to enjoy. 

He was glad it came surprisingly fast, and even though mimosas were on the far easier side of mixology he had a feeling that this wouldn’t be the best mimosa he would ever have. 

“So what’d you do with that guy last night? You show him around like he asked?” Mahiru spoke without even taking the straw out of her mouth. She would probably scold someone else for doing that when they were speaking to her, but it seemed she just had done it out of pure carelessness. She did it because she was too relaxed to even think about doing something else.

Hajime was surprised, not by the question but by the transition to the question. He knew that Mahiru would be curious about whatever he did, he would want to attribute that to the fact that she got ditched for drinks. He knew that there was more to it though, he knew that Mahiru genuinely cared about him and what he did and what not. They were good friends, and he knew this. It just seemed easier to attribute her curiosity to her being ditched given the fact that he was annoyed with her underneath all the layers that said that he shouldn’t be. 

No, Hajime was surprised by the transition to the question. There was no buildup, and they were talking already, but they were talking about nothing. Hajime couldn’t even remember what they were talking about before this question already.  
Hajime started his answer with a noise somewhere between an um and a huh, no one would be able to place it to one of those two categories if they tried. But no one would try, especially not Mahiru, because she was waiting for his actual response. “Yeah, I showed him around. He wanted to see the library, so we went there and then I waited for him until he was ready to leave. After that I took him to some restaurant, it was the one down the street from the bar. You know the one?” 

Mahiru nodded, she could picture the restaurant in her head but couldn’t remember any real details about it. 

Hajime continued. “After that we walked back to the apartments and I went home.” A laugh broke up the next statement. “I actually fell asleep on the couch as soon as I got home.” 

Mahiru snickered. “So you paid at the restaurant? That’d be the reliable thing to do.”

“Yeah I paid.” Hajime replied after finishing a sip of his mimosa. He remained neutral on the quality of the mimosa. He started another sip after that sentence though.

“Hmm, did he order something expensive enough to put out?” 

Hajime choked on his mimosa a tad. “Mahiru! It wasn’t a date.” 

“You didn’t answer the question, which isn’t very nice.” Mahiru grinned, she was obviously holding back a snicker.

“No. He didn’t put out.” Hajime paused a bit. “He didn’t order anything that expensive anyways, he ordered like a salad or something.”

The appetizers finally arrived, and Mahiru thanked the waiter if not reprimanding them a little bit for having slow service.

* * *

Hajime didn’t want to admit it, but Mahiru was right about the appetizers. 

“I didn’t mention it earlier, but I think that it's a good idea that you have someone new in your life.” The peaceful quietness of chewing was broken by Mahiru. “I think you’re the type to get too stuck into a situation.” She was right, and Hajime knew that. He had recently felt exactly like the type Mahiru was describing, but hearing it come from someone else stung a little. Something about the furious splicing but not dicing of Mahiru being right about the appetizers and her being right about Hajime’s recently feelings threw a sharp pang of further annoyance into Hajime’s gut. He knew he was being unreasonable, she was just being a friend, but that didn’t stop the worms from digging further into the diseased flesh. 

At least she hadn’t mentioned her wedding yet, and Hajime found comfort in that. That comfort dulled the sensations of annoyance backwards into his head, and the sudden flips and flops of his inner emotions struck him in acceptance of Mahiru’s genuine concern. 

Hajime replied with some causal agreement. He went to take another sip of his mimosa, and was annoyed that he drank it all so quickly. But without the mimosa to serve as a way of dissecting the situation, he felt he had no choice but to say something more substantial. “I guess that meeting someone new around this time was pretty convenient.” Hajime ended his sentence with a shrug. The worst part about this conversation was that he wasn’t exactly sure what to add to it. 

Mahiru smiled, it wasn’t exactly as nice feeling as her one from before. But it held the same sentiment, and Hajime appreciated it, although his appreciativeness of it seemed to fall into his subconscious. “I think you should keep hanging around this guy.” 

Hajime snickered. “Are you saying you want to get ditched more often?” He joked. 

Mahiru faked a gasp. “Of course not! I just think it would be a good idea for you to go out and do more. You have to do more stuff than just drink on Fridays, or you’ll end up being a sad sack of socialization.” She ended her statement with eating a mini quiche, she didn’t comment on how the chocolate banana bread was better than it though. She knew that Hajime knew that she was right. “I had an alternative motive for dragging you out here today.” 

Hajime didn’t expect that. He thought that Mahiru had only really wanted to talk about the new element in Hajime’s life. He dreaded whatever she was about to say, but only because he really had no idea what it would be. Mahiru didn’t say anything to follow her statement yet, which cued Hajime into thinking she really was wanting him to reply first. 

“Are you about to chew me out for ditching you last night?” Was what he settled on, but he wasn’t happy with how the words sounded on his lips. 

Mahiru shook her head. “No. I guess it would be the opposite of that actually. I have something to ask you.” She lent down and dug for something in her bag. Hajime previously hadn’t noticed that she had even brought a bag, and now he was even more worried for whatever she was going to drag out of it. He didn’t know why he was worried though, Mahiru seemed fine with being ditched last night so even if he was going to get chewed out for that it wouldn’t have been that bad. He thought she may just be asking him something about her wedding. Which would be the best and worst situation all at once he supposed. Maybe it was just something stupid she had to say, but knowing her it probably wasn’t. 

Mahiru found whatever she was looking for in her bag and placed it on the table. 

It was a black box. 

Hajime didn’t reach for it, he had a feeling that it was for him though. 

Mahiru smiled, and maybe it was just Hajime self projecting onto her face, but he thought she looked nervous. “So this is going to seem very sudden. Honestly I wish that I had more time to prepare but I was told I had to do this sooner rather than later if I wanted this time frame.” 

“Uh, what does that even mean?” Hajime had no clue what she seemed to be on about, but he had a decent idea that it was skewing more and more towards her wedding.  
“So I’ve decided on a date for my wedding. Three months from now actually, down to the exact day.” 

“Three months? Isn’t that really fast? Do you even have time to plan that fast?” Although Hajime had to admit that he knew nothing about how long it would take to plan a wedding. Through all his simmering feelings about Mahiru and her wedding currently, he knew he really didn’t want her to have a bad one. 

Mahiru shook her head. “You ditching me the other night was a perfect time to talk it over with Hiyoko.” Hajime had forgotten, but Hiyoko definitely was the name of Mahiru’s girlfriend, no no, Mahiru’s fiance. “We called up a friend, more my friend than Hiyoko’s I guess. She’s a wedding planner. I think you met her once, her name’s Sonia.” He had met her once, he wasn’t sure where or why though. She was with her who Hajime assumed was her boyfriend at the time, and they talked for a minute. Hajime only really remembered this because he thought that Sonia’s possible boyfriend seemed a bit strange if not anything else. He couldn’t describe it. 

Hajime didn’t mention that he remembered who Sonia was. “What did she say?” He didn’t like the fact that he felt passive at this point in the conversation, he felt like he should be talking here. 

“She said that the fastest time we could possibly plan and have a wedding in was three months, aren’t you listening?” There was no real slice to Mahiru’s voice though. “We already have a venue already, Sonia booked one as soon as Hiyoko and I decided on a date. She came over yesterday actually, and was just pumped to get stuff planned.” Mahiru giggled. “She said she always hoped that she could help plan our wedding, always thought we were a cute couple or something.” 

Hajime really wished he had seen another waiter, he was missing having a mimosa to sip from. He was worried about where this was headed, although he still wasn’t even sure where it was headed. 

“How much did you get planned last night?” Hajime asked. 

“Oh just a bit I guess. We settled on a color scheme, gold and white. We settled on the venue obviously, and we picked the type of flowers we wanted.” She paused, and pushed the black box that Hajime forgot even existed closer to him. “There’s still obviously a lot to plan, you know? But Sonia said that this next part would probably be the most stressful in this sort of time.” Mahiru smiled, and gestured for Hajime to take the box from the table. He didn’t think he was supposed to open it yet though.  
Hajime picked up the little black box, it was light in his hands. 

“So Hajime I have a question for you.” Mahiru said, there was a steadiness in her voice that caused some kind of unsteadiness in Hajime’s brain. “Do you want to open that box?” 

Hajime didn’t know how to respond, mainly because he did not want to open that box. He responded anyways. “Sure.” 

He put the box back down on the table, and took off the lid. Inside were a few photos, Hajime could tell they were covering something up at the bottom of the box though. The photos were nice, they were pictures Mahiru had taken of them together. They weren’t as professional as photos that Hajime knew Mahiru could take, she had a photography business on the side of working in the office. She usually took headshots and did photoshoots for whoever seemed to find her website for less than other photographers in the area. People usually thought that her photos were better than the other photographers anyways. 

But these photos were less professional, they caught more emotion though. There were a couple of them, and Hajime took them out one by one. His hand was shaking a little as he did so. 

They were all photos of Mahiru and Hajime being friends, and they looked so happy in every photo. 

In the bottom of the box was a tie with a floral pattern on it. Hajime picked it up, it was nice. Although Hajime couldn’t place what types of flowers they were. 

“That’s the type of flowers I decided on for my wedding. They’re gardenias, they symbolize purity and joy and a bunch of stuff I really don’t care about.” Mahiru shrugged. “I guess that’s pretty irresponsible of me to not deeply consider the symbolism of the flowers I picked for my wedding. They’re just really pretty and I thought they’d look nice.” She paused to smile. 

Hajime nodded, still holding the tie in his hand. He wasn’t looking at it anymore though, his attention was all on Mahiru. “I always thought gardenias were pretty too, I didn’t really know their name though.” He still wasn’t sure where this conversation was headed, and but he did know that didn’t want to accidentally ruin whatever was happening. 

Mahiru started speaking again. “It's very important to me that you have something nice to wear to my wedding. So I got you that tie, because it's important you have some element that matches you to the theming.” She was building up to something, but seemed just worried to say it. 

Hajime didn’t say anything though, and just waited for Mahiru to start talking again. 

“So Hajime, do you want to be my maid of honor? Well I guess you’re not a maid, but a man of honor.” Mahiru asked, with amusement in her voice. It was like she already knew what Hajime’s answer would be without him even saying it. 

Hajime didn’t answer right away. “Wait I thought that one girl you went to highschool with would be your maid of honor?” 

Mahiru shook her head. “I always thought she would be I guess, but I don’t even think she’ll make it into my bridal party now. I haven’t spoken to her for months now, you know? And I have my ideal bridal party in my head. I think I’ll only have two bridesmaids, and don’t worry, you know them. They’d be Ibuki and Mikan, although I haven’t asked them yet. I just think that you’re probably my closest friend currently, and I don’t think it would feel right asking anyone else besides you.” 

Ibuki and Mikan were two other girls that worked in the office with Mahiru and Hajime. Hajime knew them well enough, and they were fine. They weren’t close friends or anything with Hajime, but he could see why Mahiru would pick them for her bridesmaids.

Hajime still didn’t answer the question on whether or not he would be Mahiru’s man of honor. “Sorry, this is just a lot of responsibility really fast?” Hajime said the statement as a question, it wasn’t intentional, he just didn’t really know how to respond to this. 

Mahiru sighed. “I know, just the other day I was telling you how I was planning to propose and now I’m asking you to be my man of honor. I guess this is why Sonia said that I had to ask this question as soon as I could if I wanted to have my wedding this fast.” She paused for a second, seemingly thinking over what she was about to say. “I just think I want to be young and in love forever. I don’t want to wait anymore for what I knew I wanted after I first met her. I don’t know if I’ll ever love something as much as I love her, and I think I love her the most over everything I’ve ever loved. With her by my side I can grow old and think that I’m still the same person, just as young and in love as I am now.” 

Hajime didn’t think he had ever been in love before. He had though, but he wasn’t in love with a person, but instead a concept. Hajime was enamored with the idea of a perfect life, he wanted a perfect job, and a perfect house, and even most of all he wanted a perfect relationship. Hajime wanted what Mahiru already seemed to have, and it hurt him to say that he didn’t feel any jealousy towards her. He seemed to acknowledge that he had already fallen out of love with the idea of having such a perfect life. 

He tightened his grip around the gardenia patterned tie in his hand, not out of frustration but as a way to center himself in the situation. “I don’t think nearing the end of our twenties is what is considered young.” Hajime joked, which helped to further center himself. 

Mahiru swatted at the air and laughed. “Stop it! Don’t go and ruin this moment.” She let out another laugh before speaking again. “So I’ll give you time to think about it. It’d be the most reliable thing if you gave me an answer by next week, since I’m going to need your opinion on things.” 

Hajime shook his head, and his subconsciously loosened his grip on the tie in his hand. “No, I’ll do it. I’ll be your man of honor, Mahiru.” 

Hajime had no words that he felt could accurately describe the pure joy and relief on Mahiru’s face.

* * *

They weren’t at the restaurant for a long time, and when Hajime finally got back to his apartment he found himself highly energized. Maybe it was the adereline still seeping through his veins after the whole becoming a man of honor situation. 

Man of honor, Hajime really did agree to be in Mahiru’s wedding, didn’t he?

That started to finally sink in, and maybe he should have taken a few days to really think about it before saying yes. He didn’t think his answer would have changed, he wanted to be there for Mahiru. He cared about her, and was highly honored to even be her first choice. 

It was just he knew then he would become more involved in the wedding planning, which on the surface was fine he guessed. It wouldn’t be taking up time he could have spent doing something better, because he had nothing else he really was doing. He had work, and he had hanging out with Mahiru, now he would just be hanging out with her more. 

No that wasn’t right, it would have been right about a week ago, but it wasn’t right anymore. 

Hajime had Nagito now, although they only really had spent one day together. It was nice though, and something about Nagito just seemed to draw Hajime back to him. Hajime wanted to see more of him, and before Hajime knew it he was already calling Nagito. He guessed it was just that Nagito seemed like he would be a good friend, and Hajime was drawn to that. 

Nagito answered on the second ring. 

“Hi Hajime! It's such a nice surprise to have you call someone like me.” Nagito sounded so cheerful, and maybe it was something about how Hajime was already in such an energized mood he couldn’t help but smile at it.  
“Hey Nagito, I was just wondering if you wanted to see any part of town today.” Hajime replied.

Nagito gasped. “Ah! That’s such a nice thing of you to ask, but I don’t think I can take advantage of your kindness for two days in a row.” Hajime couldn’t see him but he had a feeling that Nagito was shaking his head. 

“Nagito where do you want to go?” Hajime ignored the objections he had just heard. 

“Hmm, I can’t really think of anywhere or anything that I would want to see today.” 

Hajime doubted that Nagito really wanted to not explore the city. But he had a feeling Nagito was just trying to get him to not take him around to see them. 

“Well, how about I just come pick you up from your apartment and we just walk around together until you feel like you’re more familiarized with the city?” 

“No, no I really couldn’t.” Nagito’s protest seemed weak though, and Hajime took it as a sign that he wouldn’t really mind that at all. 

“How about I come by your apartment in thirty minutes and come see how you feel then? Thinking about it there’s a museum nearby that I have a feeling you’d like.” Hajime suggested, thinking that would make Nagito come around. He wasn’t sure why but he had a feeling Nagito wouldn’t object to looking around a museum. 

Nagito made a hum that sounded like he was considering it. “If you come by I think it would be really rude of me to object, besides I think it would be nice to look around a museum with you, Hajime.” 

Hajime smiled. “Great, see you in thirty minutes.” 

They said bye, and Hajime hung up the phone. It would be nice to look around the museum, unlike the library, Hajime had actually been there before. It had been a while though, and Hajime had largely forgotten what kind of things they had there. 

Hajime also couldn’t really remember a time where he had gone to a museum with someone. Sure, he had been to museums on school field trips with groups of other kids from his class, but not like just two people looking around together.  
But Hajime also wondered why he suddenly felt the need to go even hang out with Nagito in the first place today. Maybe it was Mahiru’s fault, she did say that she thought it would be good for him to go and hang out with that guy more. Maybe he felt he owed it to her since she gave Hajime a part in her wedding? But none of that really felt right. 

Maybe Hajime just wanted to hang out with Nagito because he just wanted to see him again.

He didn’t end up coming to a conclusion on why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is still very self indulgent. I still am breaking the show don't tell rule, but you know what I'm having fun. Recently I've been working on just writing things I like, and I really like this story I've laid out. I like how I write Mahiru, even if she might not be the most in character. I just think I had a lot of fun with how I wrote Hajime and Mahiru's dynamic.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nagito and Hajime go to the museum and hang out.

Thirty minutes didn’t feel like a long time in the grand scheme of things, but currently for Hajime it felt like forever. Maybe it was the constant checking of his phone, or maybe it was just the fact that he felt anxious.

Wait… Anxious?

Thinking into it more, Hajime did feel anxious. He could accept that, but he couldn’t accept it without knowing why he was feeling anxious. Sure, a lot of things just seemed to change in his life within a couple of days. And those things even seemed extremely fast paced within those couple of days. 

Hajime could just chalk it up to Mahiru again. But it wasn’t as if he wanted to blame everything on Mahiru. Though that did seem that was the road he was headed on. 

Whatever, he’ll revisit that topic later. Right now he had to focus on the situation itself, and not the anxiety caused from it. 

He checked the time, in an effort to clear his head of the tangle caused by the thoughts inside his skull. It didn’t do much to actually help with unraveling the tangle, but he did realize that the thirty minutes had gone down to twenty. Which wasn’t exactly a huge difference in time, but to Hajime it felt like a well needed reminder that things around him are actually happening. He had twenty minutes to get ready left on the clock. 

But then again, did he really need to get ready? He was just out with Mahiru, and he guessed that he didn’t need to actually do anything different for the museum compared to that restaurant.

He should just stop overthinking every little detail. Well, that had to just surround back to his anxiousness and maybe this really was the time to address it. Hajime knew that he couldn’t just shove everything under the rug, regardless of if it was healthy for his mental stability, he knew that it would all come out in some horrid moment. Hajime could see it now, he ends up yelling at Mahiru right before she walks down the aisle or something. 

Huh, guess he really could just blame it all on Mahiru. It seemed that every thought was coming back to the fact that she was getting married. So maybe it wasn’t that Hajime was a horrible person for trying to blame all his problems on other people, maybe it was just slow to process. But that couldn’t be it, because it seems that everything in his life seemed to circle back onto thinking about how Mahiru was getting married. 

Maybe he was resentful. 

He didn’t want to be, desperately didn’t want to be. 

So he tried to dig deeper, why was he feeling this way? Was it that his life was practically the same as it was five years ago? That was probably it, and that had to be it. That was the only deciding cause, he was just forced to confront this head on with Mahiru’s wedding. There had to always be some little nagging part of his mind, he had to have always known this, but her engagement and by her own accord fast tracking her wedding had to shove this all into overdrive.

He knew that he was just repeating old information into his head over and over again, and this is when he had an idea. Not a new idea, but an old idea at its core. Although, the word old only applied when referring to this idea in comparison of the current onslaught of emotions brought up recently. 

He would just focus all that energy of resentment onto something else. Of course he couldn’t spend all his time when he was supposed to be helping Mahiru with her wedding being bitter, just for the sake of being bitter. But he had a feeling that this bitterness only really seemed to spearhead its way into his head when he was alone, if he was with Mahiru helping her that would be fine. No, this was an idea for when he would have to deal with it alone. 

He would just keep showing Nagito around to places. Which was actually pretty much what he seemed to be doing on his own here anyways. But if he had a new conscious effort to do it, then certainly he wouldn’t keep wondering why he kept wanting to hang out with Nagito anyways. Besides, Hajime actually was enjoying the time he was spending around him. 

Hajime checked the time, he had ten minutes left.

He wouldn’t dare to shove himself into more analysis of himself. He felt like he was stuck inside some Tilt-A-Whirl of horrid discoveries and was just going over the same things over and over again. No, now he would focus all that power running the Tilt-A-Whirl on the seemingly only new addition in his life in over five years. 

First thing to go would be thoughts like that, or at least in theory they would.

* * *

Nagito had seemed surprised that Hajime had actually ended up showing up to his door. 

He seemed excited though, so Hajime didn’t want to allow himself to be too put off by that surprise. Hajime had a feeling though that he would be getting pretty used to reactions like this real soon though, or at least he would try to. 

The elevator ride was quiet, but not in the sense of actual sound. It was more like quiet in the sense that no new information or thought came around. It was calming on one hand, but on the other it drove the idea of the Tilt-A-Whirl further into Hajime’s mind. He was worried he would never escape that endless feeling he already had felt so ready to get rid off, and it was exhausting to some extent. Although that wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own Hajime guessed. 

Hajime decided he wasn’t going to try and focus on any previous spirals of thought he had, he wanted to just try and enjoy this time at the museum. 

Besides, he was dead set on having someone else in his life besides Mahiru. 

The street was busy, it was a stark contrast to the elevator and the calm lobby of their apartment building. Hajime liked it though, silence wouldn’t accomplish anything productive in this situation anyways. 

“So Hajime, which way is the museum?” Nagito asked, he quickly moved his head from left to right almost in time with his statement. 

“Oh, yeah.” Hajime said. “It's right over there.” He didn’t point, but rather he started walking in the direction instead. Nagito trailed behind him. 

“There’s so many people in the city, Hajime! Although I guessed you knew that anyway.” Nagito looked around, and he was right. Although the street did seem a bit more populated than it usually did, Hajime wondered if there was a concert or something in town. “It’d be so easy for me to get lost, I’m truly pathetic! Good thing you’re so kind Hajime.” 

Hajime didn’t reply, he thought he should have though. But he didn’t really know what would have been the right thing to say. He settled his brain with saying that no answer would have been better than the wrong answer anyways. It was a calming thought, although he didn’t consider how Nagito would have taken the lack of response.

* * *

The museum was certainly another standout of the city architecture wise. Well, at least Hajime thought it was. He mainly had that idea though because it was a large building.

It was large in size, sure. There was a lot of artifacts they had in there, and there had to be space for all the displays they wanted to maintain. But Hajime thought of it more as large in grandeur and grandiose. And although one could necessarily say that it was large in one or the other, it felt needed to say both. The building just seemed to hold that sort of respect. 

Hold that? No, it seemed it rather demanded it as much as a building could. 

Hajime thought that if the museum was a person, they wouldn’t get along very well just based on first impressions. But the museum was not a person, and Hajime promised Nagito he would show him around. He didn’t really want to go back on that. 

So Hajime turned around, he hadn’t actually turned around to look at Nagito for the entire time they had walked together this time. They chatted as they walked, but Hajime was walking slightly more in front and only saw Nagito through the corner of his eye. 

He was suddenly reminded of that one legend, or myth, or fairytale. He didn’t remember most of the details of it, but he knew the point of it was that one person was trying to walk somewhere with their wife or whatever. But the catch was that the wife was dead, and that if the person looked around at her she would die a second death or something. 

The details were hazy, but that wasn’t important. Enough had remained that a connection could be felt. 

Hajime then dismissed this connection as stupid and tried to completetly disregard it. 

He said something to Nagito about if he was ready to go in, the crowd that seemed to engulf the surrounding area outside the apartment building seemed to have dissipated around the museum. He didn’t know if that would affect any part of Nagito’s decision on if he wanted to go in, but decided it was important enough to note. 

Nagito didn’t respond to Hajime, or at least didn’t seem to have a response.

And Hajime began to feel a slight worry claw at the back of his throat, only slightly though. He thought more about if this is was what Nagito was feeling when he didn’t reply earlier. Hajime reversed his previous idea that no response was better than no response. 

To fill the situation with noise besides the clatter of the street, Hajime started talking again. He said something to the affect about how the museum was known around the city for being something that only people with kids seem to go to, and how he thought that was a shame. 

Hajime didn’t really believe that was a shame, he didn’t have strong feelings about the museum. It was true that the spot was a popular place among kids though, probably based on that idea that kids were visual learners and all that. Hajime didn’t know much about kids, or the educational values of parents of kids. He didn’t care, he was just trying to think of further words to respond to Nagito if he tried to deepen the conversation that Hajime was desperately wanting to start. 

Damn, maybe Hajime really did need to get out and socialize more if this was going to be difficult. Nagito seemed like a fine person to talk to the other day, why did now feel different? 

Nagito said something, Hajime didn’t catch it. He was too busy being off in his own head and the worries that dug into the flesh of his brain matter. But from knowing Nagito a few days, he thought that he probably said something self-deprecating or singing praises. Hajime guessed that missing a comment like that wouldn’t be that bad. 

He fell out of his thoughts, and he was right on half of it. 

“-expected! Someone as horrid as me truly could never capture the attention of someone like you.” Nagito went on, and Hajime almost regretted even being worried about missing what Nagito was saying in the first place. 

“So are you wanting to go in? Museums always seem to close earlier in the day.” Hajime said, hoping to fill the air with something else besides whatever it was Nagito always seemed to be on about. 

He nodded, and they walked closer to this fountain that was outside the museum. It was exactly the type of fanciful fountain one would imagine in front of a museum. It was grey, and with all of the water pouring out of it, Hajme couldn’t help but feel a chill looking at it. There was a large bowl in the middle of the fountain and it had the expected water cascading down it. The fountain also had a few statues of swans. Their wings and backs arched as their necks held out towards the sky. Water rose from their mouths. 

It wasn’t any rival for the Trevi Fountain, but Hajime thought it seemed very fitting for the surrounding area it was in. 

He decided he desperately wanted to throw a coin into it. 

So before walking right past it, he stopped and moved closer to one of the sides of it. Nagito stayed close to his side and followed suit. Hajime fumbled around for his wallet, he couldn’t seem to remember if it was in his front or back pocket, or if it was on the left or the right one on that. 

He found it in his front right pocket.

Hajime pulled out two of the cleanest looking coins in his now found wallet. He offered, or more so handed one off to Nagito. 

“Feel like wishing for something?” Hajime asked, he didn’t know what he would end up wishing for anyways. All he knew was that he wanted to wish for something. 

Nagito took the coin and looked it over. He hummed in response, seemingly thinking over whatever he wanted to say. “I doubt what I’m going to wish for will come true.” Nagito turned to face Hajime, and smiled. “I’ve already been far too lucky today.” 

Hajime snorted a little, he offered up a smile of his own as well. Although his had far more of a silly feel to it. “Well you’ll never know unless you end up wishing for it in the first place. Besides, there’s no harm to it in the first place.” 

“Huh… I guess you’re right.” Nagito punctuated his sentence by throwing the coin into the fountain where it promptly sunk to the bottom among many just like it. 

Hajime’s coin followed soon after, even though his wish was still undecided.

He could just pick it at a later date, right?

* * *

The museum wasn’t a history museum, which was something Hajime had forgotten about due to the fact that he hadn’t been there for such a long time. If he was by himself he wouldn’t have minded this fact at all, but he was bringing Nagito along with in. He suddenly worried about this idea of false expectations and was concerned that Nagito would think that he was trying to deceive him for one reason or another. 

So he did what any logical person would do, he treated this detail he had forgotten about as a surprise. 

He was glad he found out as fast as arriving at what he wanted to call the ticket booth, but knew wasn’t the correct term. He settled on calling it the desk in his mind, but really wished he could just allow himself the easiness of referring to it in his inner monologue as the ticket booth. 

Hajime insisted on buying the tickets for the both of them himself, and he wasn’t sure why he was doing that exactly. Sure, the other day it had made sense to just buy both of their meals because then he wouldn’t have had to do math to split up the bill between the two of them. He wasn’t sure if Nagito was a strictly pay for himself person or a person that was okay with just splitting the bill in half either, and he didn’t exactly want to call the waitress over to ask her to ring them up as two separate customers or whatever. 

But a museum was different than a restaurant, one could just go up to the employee after the other. The bill wouldn’t have to be split because they would go up as two separate people, and then just regroup afterwards. 

That’s not what Hajime did though, he insisted on paying for the both of them. Which overall didn’t bother him, because he was sure if he was going out to do this with Mahiru, she would just end up paying for lunch or whatever to make them even. And it worked out further in his favor because he was able to find out that the museum was actually an art museum instead of a historical one without wandering in and asking where all the old swords and bones where. 

He knew he would have done something dumb like that, he was absoutely certain of it. 

No, Hajime started to think back on what Mahiru had said about paying for Nagito. 

Mahiru had said that paying for him would be a way to make him put out, and Hajime did not want to make Nagito feel like he had to put out. This wasn’t a date, they were just two friends hanging out and going to wander around with each other for maybe a couple of hours. But Hajime knew that he didn’t know Nagito as much as he knew Mahiru. The silent understanding of payment between friends wasn’t there yet, would Nagito think that Hajime was trying to pressure him to put out? 

Hajime didn’t know the answer to that. He also didn’t know if going to the museum could be interpreted as a date anyways. Hajime hadn’t gone on a date in a long time, which seems to be a fact that was finding its way into every little facet of his life recently. Which Hajime was blaming Mahiru for further and further for this constant reminding, and he was just going to ignore that for the time being. He’d possibly deal with that later, but he probably wouldn’t. 

Even though Hajime hadn’t been on a date in a long time, he hadn’t really gone on many dates in the first place. He didn’t peg himself as a romantic person, and he was okay with that. It hadn’t seemed to be a fact that was clawing itself deeper, and deeper, and deeper into his existence. 

But was he only caring about this fact now because of the situation he found where everything seemed to revolve around his friend’s romantic life and her opinions? 

Damn, he needed to stop thinking too much about this. 

Nagito must have noticed he was walking slowly behind him, because he started talking. “Hajime! Don’t seem so bummed, I’m really not upset with you surprising me with the museum being an art museum.” 

That wasn’t it, but Hajime didn’t want Nagito to actually know that he was thinking about him putting out and his own romantic failures, so he played along again. 

“That’s good. You struck me as someone who likes art.” Hajime said.

Nagito nodded. “I’ve always been a big fan of paintings and the like. They’re always so pretty! I really wish I knew more about art.” Nagito paused and read the name of the section of the museum they were walking into. It was some type of European art, probably renaissance. The section was named after some person who obviously donated a lot. 

Hajime wondered if they were either did it because they were so rich or because they actually cared whether or not the museum had funding or not. 

“Do you have a favorite artist Hajime?” Nagito asked as he began to walk into the section. 

Hajime followed after. “I’m not so sure. I don’t really know a lot of painters’ names. But I think Warhol probably.” 

They stopped at a painting of some people all standing around, Hajime bet it was some religious artwork but he didn’t know enough about religion to be able to identify if it was or not. 

Nagito looked over at Hajime, who only noticed this out of the corner of his eye as he was still looking over the painting. “I think I’ve always been partial to Caravaggio.” 

Well it was obvious that they had a far different taste in art, time periods and all. 

Nagito started to walk over to another painting, and Hajime quickly moved to follow him. He had given up on trying to identify any of the people in the last one, he knew he wouldn’t be able to. 

“So what’s something you really like about art? Just something random that you always seem to like.” Hajime asked as he looked over the next painting. This one had more people, which he guessed practically all of them would have. People were just really common in art. 

Nagito replied somewhere between fast and slow. It didn’t seem that it had taken him much time to actually think of an answer to Hajime’s question. Maybe it was taking him more time to figure out if that was actually the answer he wanted to give. “I really like triptychs.” 

“Yeah? Like The Garden of Earthly Delights?” Hajime asked, not really knowing the names of any other triptychs, but not wanting to seem uncultured? He guessed that would be the right word, but he was leaning more towards stupid. 

“The Garden of Earthly Delights is probably one of the most famous triptychs there is.” Nagito paused. “I guess that Caravaggio didn’t do triptychs though.” 

“I guess he didn’t but The Calling of Saint Matthew, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, and The Inspiration of Saint Matthew are displayed together right? I guess you could say they’re a triptych of Saint Matthew.” Hajime didn’t know why he knew this, maybe he learned it at a trivia night. He hoped Nagito didn’t do anymore asking about it, because Hajime wouldn’t even be able to tell him who Saint Matthew was. 

Nagito smiled. “I didn’t know you knew so much about art, Hajime. I’m impressed.” He laughed slightly. “So how about I throw the question back to you? What’s something that you really like about art?” 

Hajime shrugged. “I guess three hares? I can’t relate that back to Warhol in anyway. I just like rabbits I guess.” 

Nagito shook his head. “Hares and rabbits are different. Hares have bigger ears and hind feet.” And although he sounded a bit disappointed, a soft and small smile still appeared on Nagito’s face.

* * *

The museum seemed strangely quiet. Hajime at some point began to acutely hear every step that Nagito took deeper and deeper down the laminate hallways. 

They had wandered around a good amount of the museum, lots of European paintings, lots of landscapes, lots of paintings of people that Hajime would never know. And Hajime was having fun, he hoped that Nagito was having fun too. He assumed he was, but he had a slight feeling in the back of his head telling him otherwise. 

Hajime wanted to blame that feeling on Mahiru, sure that probably wasn’t the most fair thing to do. She wasn’t here, she doesn’t know Nagito. But just her comments about how Hajime needed more friends was getting to him in what seemed to be every possible way. Hajime wasn’t angry with her though, or maybe he was and just not wanting to admit it?

Lots of things were happening in Hajime’s head currently, and he wasn’t having the best time with trying to deeply analyze every single one of these thoughts. 

Maybe he should just focus on the moment at hand, maybe he should just focus on actually trying to listen to Mahiru’s comments on friendship and all that without deeper thoughts into it. 

“So Nagito, what’s another thing about art you like?” Hajime asked, filling the lamination of the floor with another sound besides shoes hitting it. 

Nagito looked over at Hajime. “I’m really fond of the Death and the Maiden motif.” 

“Death and the Maiden? Wasn’t that just the same motif as Beauty and the Beast but for horny goth people?”

Nagito chuckled, but it would probably be more fair to describe it as a giggle. “I guess the eroticism of it can be a bit much at times. I’m just drawn more to the idea of death as a figure alongside something that’s supposed to represent innocence and such.”

Hajime nodded. “That’s fun, I gotta say that I’m not really someone who is there for deeper analysis of things.” Rephrase that. “You know like art and movies and such, I’ve never been very good at trying to find a deeper meaning in it.” 

Nagito seemed shocked at that. “I’m sure you’d be very good at analysis Hajime.” He smiled over at Hajime. “If you’re not so repulsed by me at the end of this outing, maybe we could go and watch a movie and talk about it for a while.” 

“Hmm, like a big budget Hollywood movie? Because I’m getting the feeling you’d talk me into something more like an art film that’ll make my head feel like it's spinning.” Hajime said. 

Nagito faked a gasp. “You’ve caught me.” He started walking again.

* * *

The two left the museum soon after that. Hajime said that they should go out and walk around the movie just for Nagito to see more of it. 

Nagito agreed, and they walked around the area surrounding the museum. There was a couple stores, mainly restaurants and sweets stores. 

“Anything in specific you would like to see? Some type of place you’d think you’d city often?” Hajime asked as he glanced around, starting to feel like he was getting hungry from seeing all of the restaurants around him. 

Hajime checked his phone, it was three thirty-five. 

There was certainly a good amount of time left in the day for anything really. Though Hajime didn’t know exactly what to do to fill that time in the day. 

“Hmm, Hajime which restaurant out of the ones around us is better?”

Oh perfect, now Hajime didn’t have to suggest going to get something to eat. But now he would have to pick a restaurant out of this lineup of restaurants he really did not know that well at all. He couldn’t really look up which one would be the best out of the bunch on his phone either because Nagito was right next to him. 

Playing tour guide seemed to be harder than he thought it would be, even though the plays he has been playing tour guide at weren’t even places he really patronized either.  
“Why don’t you just pick whichever one you think sounds the best? Make a fun little game out of it.” Hajime suggested, hoping that the suggestion wouldn’t make the day have a steep decline in enjoyment. 

Nagito seemed to like the idea though, which was good. Hajime wouldn’t have had any way to salvage the day if he didn’t. 

“So am I just picking based off name or can I pick off of my first impressions on their exterior as well?” Nagito asked. 

“I’d say you can pick based off name and what you think of their exterior.” Hajime replied, and started to wonder if Nagito was starting to expect for Hajime to pay for whatever restaurant he picked. He probably would have anyways, but he didn’t want this to grow into an expectation he supposed. 

“How about that one over there?” Nagito pointed to a restaurant almost just out of sight from where they were standing. It was a place that Hajime didn’t even realize existed. 

It had a darker color storefront than the rest of the surrounding places, and Hajime could understand if Nagito had picked it just on that fact. Hajime wondered if it was intentional, something that they actually wanted to make it stand out. He guessed it probably was.

“Sure, why not? I haven’t actually been there before.” Hajime said, glad that Nagito picked the place. With him picking the place he didn’t have to pretend like he actually knew the place in any way, shape, or form. 

“How convenient! It’ll be like we’re both experiencing it for the first time.” Nagito smiled. “I hope you don’t mind sharing such an experience with such a vile and repulsive being like me. I don’t want you to not get any enjoyment due to my unsightly presence.” 

Hajime ignored what Nagito had said, he didn’t want to comment on it. “So Nagito why’d you move to the city?” He asked as he started walking over to the restaurant that had been picked. 

Nagito shrugged. “Just for something new I guess. I didn’t really want to stay where I was anymore. I’m not saying that where I was was bad or anything.” He paused for a second. “I just felt like I was stuck in the same thing that I didn’t want to be stuck in anymore I guess.” 

Hajime understood what Nagito was saying. He didn’t press on with this topic, there seemed to be nothing more to press on about anyways. Hajime was slightly hoping that there would have been some deeply interesting backstory on why Nagito was now in the city. But sometimes things just don’t present themselves as a wild adventure, and Hajime was okay with that.

* * *

The restaurant was packed. The air was absolutely dripping with chatter, and it was so heavy Hajime could almost feel the weight of it on him. The inside of the restaurant was also packed and that certainly didn’t help in any way, shape, or form in regard to the feeling of further and further weight. 

He wasn’t sure if he minded it though. Hajime felt it added onto the feeling of the place. It was dimly lit and all the tables seemed to be made out of some dark wood, Hajime would want to say mahogany but he doubted it. This place didn’t seem to be expensive enough to be able to fill their restaurant with such a nice wooden table. Or maybe he was wrong, the place could be the passion project of some rich person. The place could have also been a failing business at one point and then have ended up on one of those restaurant fixing shows and they gave the place a makeover. 

That was to say that Hajime found the place to be nice, but like casually nice. It felt like it belonged next to a certain sitdown seafood restaurant chain in both terms of atmosphere and aesthetics. Although it had to be said that all nautical theming was absent here. 

There was a couple of clusters of people in different areas of the supposed lobby of the restaurant. Hajime wondered if there was this many people waiting for a table, would they even be able to get one themselves? 

“Seems pretty packed, huh Hajime? Maybe we should just go to another place.” Nagito said as he scanned the crowd in the exact same fashion that Hajime was just doing. But something about Nagito saying that made Hajime not want to necessarily do just that, even though that was exactly what he was just about to suggest himself. 

Hajime shook his head. “Maybe we should just how long the wait is first? I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t mind waiting as long as it isn’t over an hour.” Hajime had to say that the general vibe of the place was starting to grow on him, and he would consider it a shame if he couldn’t explore whatever they had to offer. 

“Are you sure Hajime? I’m certain you don’t deserve to be forced to spend more time with trash like me.” Nagito slid his right hand up from his left elbow to over his left shoulder. He looked down at the floor, but it would be safer to say he was looking anywhere besides the person in front of him. 

Hajime rolled his eyes, he wouldn’t directly tell Nagito to cut this out but he really wish he would. He wasn’t horrible to be around, and treating himself like he was just wasn’t fair. 

“Come on, let’s just go ask the hostess the wait time.” Hajime said as he walked up to the lady standing at the counter.

She was nice, and the wait was only around thirty to forty-five minutes which was nicely within Hajime’s only stipulation on that the wait had to be shorter than one hour. Hajime set a reservation for a table for two under his own name, and then went back over to Nagito. 

Nagito smiled as Hajime came back. “So how’d it go? Did your calming charm win her over to give us a table quicker?” 

Hajime laughed. “I wish, wait isn’t too bad though. It’ll be about thirty to forty-five minutes, which isn’t that bad. I’ve definitely waited longer before.” Even if he did have any charm he doubted that it would be able to change the wait time, and besides it's not as if it's the hostess's fault that the restaurant was busy. 

Nagito scanned his eyes around the lobby, searching to see if there were any empty chairs to sit at or anything of the sort. Just by what seemed to be luck alone, a cluster of about five people got called to their table at around the same time. He wandered his way over there and picked a seat out of the bunch, he then patted the seat next to him. Hajime sat down next to him. 

“So Hajime, what do you think was your favorite artistic period?” Nagito asked, seemingly still wanting to carry on the random sporadic conversations on art they had earlier. 

Hajime hummed. “Probably baroque, mainly for the architecture if not anything else though. But don’t ask me about architecture. I don’t really know anything about it.” 

Nagito made a noise somewhere between an exaggerated gasp and a chuckle. “Andy Warhol, three hares, and baroque. Those don’t really seem to go together at all, Hajime!” 

Hajime only seemed to shrug in response. “I guess they don't.” 

“I bet you would make a fun museum docent, Hajime.” Nagito mused, before quickly looking a bit more shocked. “You haven’t even told me what your job is yet! I bet it's something wonderful.” He punctuated his sentence with a slight smile and head tilt. 

Hajime shook his head. “I’m a secretary at an office nearby. It's not anything that interesting. I spend my time answering phone calls and doing the occasional dumb task. Someone broke the laminator the other day, and I had to spend about two hours trying to fix the laminator that someone broke because they thought they knew how to use it but didn’t.” He sighed. “I eventually just gave up and went and searched for a new one.” 

“They must have broken it pretty badly if you couldn’t have fixed it! You seem like the real handy type.” Nagito drummed his right fingers on his left upper arm. 

Hajime snorted and shook his head. “I’m not really the type of person people call on for handy things. Last handy thing I did was replace the leg on a table maybe four months ago. And that was only after it had been broken for two years.” 

Nagito shook his head. “If something ever needs fixing in my apartment I have a feeling I’m going to end up calling you.” 

Hajime hoped that it wouldn’t have to deal with something like his plumbing and electricity, mainly because Nagito was supposed to tell the front desk about that so they could get a professional to fix it. But also because he knew he would mess it up even worse than it was in the first place, and he really didn’t want Nagito to get mad at him. 

“So Nagito what do you plan to do now that you’re here in the city? Got a job lined up?” Hajime asked.

Nagito shook his head. “I worked as a critic on a magazine where I last lived. I quit before moving here though. That was really the only thing that tied me there anyways, I don’t have any family and I didn’t have a boyfriend or anything.” 

“A critic? Did you like review movies?” Hajime asked. 

“No, I reviewed books.” Nagito sighed. “I think I’ll miss it though, I really enjoy reading a lot. I also got to meet a couple of authors too!” 

“So what do you plan to do now that you’re in the city?”

“I think I’ll start a blog where I review books, just so I don’t lose it from my life entirely. Maybe I’ll see if there are any positions open over at the library you showed me.”

Hajime didn’t think there would be, but he couldn’t deny the fact that he thought that Nagito would be a pretty good librarian. There was just something about him that felt suited to more, Hajime guessed what one would call intellectual settings. Forever wandering around the bookshelves of a library, a pile of books in his hand and he carefully looked over the titles before placing them back. 

Hajime could just imagine him with the stereotypical librarian glasses, and he smiled at the thought of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really liked just having them talk about art, sure it might not be the most exciting thing to read but I think it's fun. Again this is just very self indulgent, and I think that's okay. Sometimes as people we just have to focus on doing things that make us happy. Sorry if this message seems out of place, I've been pretty frazzled lately.


	4. Chapter 4

It had gotten colder by the time they had left the restaurant. Colder in both the sense of weather and the sense of people. The wind had picked up, and that in itself wasn’t that bad. But it did set a further sense of, something? Hajime wasn’t exactly sure what word he was looking for, but the city felt more looming in some aspect. That isn’t to say that he felt uncomfortable though, quite the opposite actually. 

The wait in the restaurant had fallen down into the further end of the hostesses’s comment. And although they didn’t exactly meet an hour of waiting for a table, the two certainly did almost get close to it. They wouldn’t have noticed though, as they seemed to be too preoccupied with conversation. 

Hajime almost didn’t hear his name being called for their table, but right around when the hostess was just about to give up on the reservation, he caught it. 

The place wasn’t a seafood joint, like Hajime had subconsciously expected it to be. The place served food not unlike the diner that he and Nagito went to the first time they hung out, but Hajime definitely felt that this place was one step above that last place. He didn’t exactly know what made it seem better in that sense, but he had a feeling that it heavily had relied on their atmosphere rather than the inherent quality of the food. 

“I think I liked that place overall.” Nagito punctuated his sentence with a hum, and smiled over at Hajime. “What did you think?” 

Hajime shrugged. “That place was fine I guess. Wasn’t very special.” 

Nagito chuckled, or maybe it was more of a giggle? Hajime couldn’t place it. “Then maybe you’ll just have to show me a place that you do consider special next.” 

“I don’t think I really know anywhere special.” Hajime said, his full attention was not necessarily focused on thinking of some restaurant he liked. 

There was a pause in conversation, as Nagito didn’t reply immediately. “If you can bear an infected wound like me, just festering into your skin for so long, we could make that a goal.” Hajime guessed that Nagito smiled, he didn’t look over to confirm that though. Something in his head was just telling him to keep that as an unchecked fact. He decided that he wouldn’t reply either. 

Despite being the newer person to the area, Nagito had found himself walking slightly in front of Hajime. That wouldn’t be much of a problem if not for the fact that Nagito seemed so confident in his steps, Hajime briefly wondered if he had ever been in the city before. In fact, he could lure Hajime into walking somewhere far off the correct path if Hajime just only paid attention to Nagito’s steps. 

Did Nagito consciously know that he had in essence started to lead Hajime around?

Hajime guessed this wasn’t the case, that Nagito probably was just a faster walker than he was. That was fine, it didn’t bother him or anything.

“Do you think you would ever go to that place again?” Hajime asked. He was feeling a slight pressure to somehow create conversation, even though he had previously decided to simply ignore the question that Nagito had asked him. He guessed he deserved the same treatment if Nagito wanted to get even. 

“I think I would. I liked the soup I got.” He paused. “I guess soup is pretty easy to impress someone with though.” 

Hajime laughed. “Are you saying that you really just like soup?” 

Nagito shook his head, it almost wasn’t noticeable from the back of his head. “No, I’m saying that I think it's an easy thing to impress someone with. Though I can see where you would get that assumption.” 

They reached a crosswalk, the light was red. 

This gave Hajime the chance to walk up to Nagito’s left side. Which felt a bit strange, as Hajime would have chosen to stand next to his right side. He didn’t change to the other side though. 

Nagito kept his eye on the crosswalk light for a second, his attention flickered down to the rapidly onslaught of cars, and then turned to Hajime. 

“I didn’t notice this many cars over by the restaurant.” Nagito said, and he was right. Hajime couldn’t have given an exact reason for why there were more cars here, but he had a feeling that it was due to the fact they had walked over to a more store filled street. All these cars were probably people finally getting off the shift they really had not wanted to take but that their pocket cash had told them otherwise. Hajime knew that there were at least three different ice creameries and maybe a million corner stores down that street. 

But he didn’t really know where the employees would have parked their cars, wouldn’t they just want to walk over to their jobs?

Well, it didn’t matter. That was just a possible thought on where all these cars came from, and it wasn’t as if the existence of the world depended on whether or not Hajime could figure it out. 

Hajime made a movement that was almost like a shrug, but it ended halfway. “I guess people are headed home.”

“Or maybe they’re headed out.” Nagito replied.

Hajime nodded. “I guess you’re right.” 

Nagito seemed to look down for a second before glancing over to the crosswalk light. He seemed to tense up for a millisecond at most. “Hey Hajime?” He asked. 

“Yeah?” 

“The crosswalk light has turned green.” Nagito said before he started to walk out into the street, but it seemed like he wanted to say something else. Hajime wouldn’t have a guess on what it would be though.

* * *

Elevators always had a strangely sterilized feeling to them. Maybe it was something about the single color that surrounds them, and the clearly artificial light that wouldn’t fool a town drunk into thinking that it could even remotely look realistic. 

That feeling transferred over into any elevator for Hajime, even if they aren’t the cleanest like in the case of the one in his apartment building. 

There wasn’t any elevator music, and Hajime had never really realized that most elevators he had been in didn’t have any music until one day that Mahiru had come over. She went on a whole spiel about it, which Hajime honestly couldn’t even remember now. 

Nagito pushed the button for his floor, but hesitated before pushing the button for Hajime’s floor. And although Hajime noticed this, he just chalked it up to Nagito trying to remember what floor he lived on. 

“I had a good time today, Hajime.” Nagito ended his sentence with a smile. 

“I had fun too.” Hajime said, and he noted that he actually had more fun than he thought he would. Something about spending time with another person just seemed nice-? Hajime didn’t think that word especially fit the situation. It somehow felt too weak and didn’t convey the correct emotion but he didn’t know what else to say. Mahiru was right, which in hindsight she usually was, but something about her being right about Hajime needing more friends softened the blow on her basically calling Hajime an isolated idiot. 

Nagito glanced up to the screen above the elevator door that said the number of the floor they were on. Hajime glanced at it too, if only to not just end up staring at Nagito once again in this short elevator ride. 

“Even though I think I shouldn’t be, I can’t help but be happy that you allowed me to be an accomplice to you today.” Nagito crossed his arms and looked down at his shoe. Hajime hoped that he wouldn’t glance over to his and notice the blatant scuff on it, even though he was indeed the cause of that scuff. 

Why was Nagito making it sound like Hajime wasn’t going to spend time with him anymore after today? Just something about his tone carried a somber feeling.

“Hey, you wanna hang out again soon?” Hajime blurted out, without really thinking about it. 

Nagito made a sound close to a sigh but Hajime wouldn’t dare call it one. There weren't any key feelings of a sigh behind it, no annoyance or exasperation. “Yes-.”

The elevator opened, interrupting the rest of Nagito’s thought. He looked into the hallway before stepping out into it. His expression changed as he looked back at Hajime. 

“Hey Hajime, do you want to-.” 

The elevator doors closed, cutting off Nagito once again. 

Hajime didn’t ride the elevator back down.

* * *

When Hajime entered the office on Monday things were thrown out of their natural balance. Somehow people seemed more interested in Mahiru’s engagement now that all of the members of her bridal party worked at the exact same office, what a shocker! 

It wasn’t as if Hajime cared that Mahiru was getting attention, usually the day would just consist of her getting probably about the same amount of attention but it was focused more on the daily work that was done in the office. She would occasionally come around to Hajime’s desk and take some time to be snarky.

No, the problem was that people started to chat it up with Hajime today. Asking him all sorts of questions about Mahiru and her fiancee and their wedding plans and honestly Hajime was already sick of it. He didn’t consider himself an irritable person, but he sure was miffed. 

He took his lunch break earlier than he usually did, and to his surprise he found Mikan and Ibuki sitting together at the small little table that was next to the fridge in the breakroom. 

The table in the breakroom looked to be on its last legs, and every now and then Hajime would spend a bit of time looking for a table to replace it when the rest of the work day was dull. But because of this weak table, Hajime almost didn’t go sit down with Ibuki and Mikan to eat his lunch. 

Once Ibuki caught sight of Hajime though, all those ideas went out the window.

“Hey Hajime! Hajime! Over here!” Ibuki stretched out the e’s in every word of her sentence. She was waving frantically, and Hajime thought that the smile plastered on her face would look glaringly fake if it was on anyone else besides her. “Come sit with us!” Ibuki practically yelled, visibly startling Mikan a little bit, whose ears were getting a bit of a surprise.

Hajime couldn’t just walk away, now could he? That would be especially rude. So he walked over, weary of even putting down his turkey sandwich on that table. 

He secretly hoped that Ibuki didn’t want to talk about Mahiru’s wedding, but he knew otherwise. It's better not to get your hopes up for something you know will never happen, it spares the disappointment. 

There was one chair left at the table. Ibuki’s and Mikan’s chairs were on the opposite side of the final chair. Hajime took the last chair though, he didn’t move it.  
“Ibuki is just so excited you decided to sit with us today!” Ibuki said as she attempted to flick a cherry tomato off her salad container and into her mouth with her fork. She failed and it hit Mikan in the face.

Mikan made a sound similar to what someone would picture when they imagine a cartoon mouse. “P-Please… don’t fling food at me…” 

Hajime watched as the cherry tomato bounced onto the floor, and began rolling away from the table. Ibuki gasped and seemed to jump up from her spot at the table with an immense speed, and started chasing after it. 

Hajime didn’t know much about what Ibuki actually did at the office, he knew her title was something along the lines of marketing or advertising but that was really it. He was thinking she was the head of her department, but Hajime wouldn’t say that outloud in case he was really wrong about that. 

Mikan on the other hand Hajime knew more about her job. It wasn’t that he sought out what she did or anything, but it was important to know who worked in HR. Hajime wasn’t exactly sure how Mikan got that job though, as Hajime had never really seen her be stern with anything before. Maybe their office was just such a good place that Mikan didn’t need to be stern with anyone? Hajime decided he’d go with that. 

“Tada!” Ibuki grabbed the cherry tomato. “Thought you could get away from me?”

“Ah! Ibuki don’t eat that!” Mikan yelled, now getting up from her seat and running over to take the cherry tomato away from Ibuki. “It’s been on the ground! And who kn-knows what kind of b-bacteria got on it!” 

But Mikan’s efforts seemed to be in vain, as Ibuki had already put the cherry tomato into her mouth. 

Hajime stared at this, and wondered what was happening in his life. Did he live in a sitcom? Did this event really just transpire in front of him? Sometimes Hajime wondered why he didn’t try and talk to more of his coworkers, but then he saw something like this happen. 

He had to admit that it was a little amusing though, and a slight smile may have wormed its way onto his face. 

Mikan had said some other things to Ibuki, something more about bacteria and something else about nutrition. Hajime wasn’t really listening though and was glad that they seemed to forget about him sitting there. At least he wouldn’t end up dragged into their conversation that way. 

Eventually they made their way back over to the table. Hajime had pretty much forgotten that the table was so weak looking, because it had held up pretty well over that whole ordeal. 

Ibuki went back to her salad, but she didn’t try and launch anything else into her mouth. 

“H-Hajime I heard you're g-going to be Mahiru’s maid of honor?” Mikan asked.

Hajime nodded. “Yeah he asked me over the weekend.” 

Ibuki slammed her palms on the table, it shook pretty wildly. Hajime grabbed the side of it to try and steady it. “Yahoo! What a party this wedding party will be! Two bridesmaids as fun as Mikan and Ibuki and a maid of honor just as cool as Hajime! What a hoot!” She stretched the oo’s.

Hajime thought that he probably should have started talking to these two about the wedding sooner. Mahiru did say she wanted to get married in three months, and a bridal party does a lot of planning things together, right? 

Ibuki had seemed to have kept talking while Hajime had started thinking, but he didn’t think he missed too much.

“-And these bridesmaids gifts Mahiru gave us! Oh! Did you get one too?” Ibuki jangled her wrist over the table, obviously wanting Hajime to look at her bracelet. 

It was a simple gold bracelet with a charm. Hajime didn’t know if it was real gold or not, but he had a feeling that it would be because Mahiru had probably been the one that picked it out. The charm was the real focus of the bracelet though, it was a cute little gardenia. 

“I got a tie.” Hajime responded, before deciding he wanted to add more detail to his statement. “It has gardenias on it too.” 

“Ah!” Ibuki practically squealed. “I just love flowers!” 

“It-it was surprising that Mahiru gave out the bridal party gifts when she a-asked.” Mikan said, her voice just acting as a standout against Ibuki’s, possibly drawing more of Hajime’s attention to her than she had actually wanted. 

Hajime didn’t actually know that giving out bridesmaids gifts wasn't common this early on, but he did notice Mikan’s use of bridal party rather than bridesmaids. He wondered how she had felt about this, sure Mikan and Mahiru weren’t as close as Hajime and Mahiru were. But Hajime probably wasn’t who Mikan had thought of in her mind when she conjured up images of Mahiru’s wedding. 

He was probably overthinking it. 

“Oh yeah? Have you been a bridesmaid before, Mikan?” Hajime asked, seemingly forgetting about his lunch.

Mikan nodded. “Many times actually. I… I always seem to be the person someone asks to be in their wedding.” 

“Always a bridesmaid, never a bride!” Ibuki seemed to have been waiting for the end of Mikan’s sentence to start talking again. “But that’s okay!” She stretched the o, and smiled widely. “You’re just too cute to be snatched off the market!” 

“Ibuki!” Mikan squeaked. 

Ibuki turned her attention back to Hajime. “Are you ready for Mahiru to try on dresses this weekend?” 

“Huh?” Hajime either was really not listening to anything Mahiru had said to him recently, or he just wasn’t told about this yet. 

Or maybe Mahiru was able to tell that Hajime was being so weird about her wedding and her engagement because he can’t figure out how to make himself happy in his own life that she just straight up didn’t invite her man of honor to her picking out a wedding dress. 

“Ibuki!” Mikan would have sounded like a broken record if she didn’t speak with a bit more authority and conviction this time. That is if Hajime could even call her tone authoritative. “Mahiru didn’t tell him yet.” 

Ibuki gasped in such a way that Hajime felt that he was watching a bad actress at a highschool production of some play they decided, but he knew that she was completely genuine. “I’m sorry Hajime! Just go talk to Mahiru immediately so it won’t be like anything happened!” 

Hajime almost didn’t want to respond, he wasn’t sure why but something was just gnawing at the back of his head. Probably that feeling that he really wanted to go eat his turkey sandwich in peace. 

Oh! 

Ibuki and Mikan started their lunch break before Hajime did, certainly they had to be nearing the end of that break now, right?

“Hey, I know you guys are considered higher level jobs than me. Does that mean you have a longer lunch break?” Hajime almost winced at himself, he wasn't being subtle. He didn’t even really know what he was saying, just some bullshit that he didn’t even believe to get these two to leave the table. 

“Ah!” Ibuki practically screamed, and Hajime felt bad for Mikan’s ears again. “Mikan! Our break is probably up by now!” Ibuki started to practically drag Mikan out of the room. “See you later Hajime! We have to get back to work.” 

Mikan looked like she was saying something, but Hajime didn’t know who she was directing it to. Honestly, he didn’t really care what she said anyways. He had a turkey sandwich to attend to.

* * *

Hajime had finished the actual lunch portion of his lunch break pretty quickly after Ibuki and Mikan left. And as grateful as he was to finally be alone at the office at a time where he felt like everyone was just another onslaught of conversation after conversation, he was already missing the energy that Ibuki had given into the room. Hajime didn’t want to delve deeper into thinking about why. 

So he sat there staring at his empty paper bag, focusing all of his energy into deciding whether or not he wanted to get up to throw it away yet. 

He groaned, throwing his face into his hand and slumping over the breakroom table. The stagnant dirty whiteness of the walls and the loud humming of the refrigerator seemed to be causing his head to throb, or maybe that was just an illusion? All Hajime knew was that as desperately as he wanted to get on his break, he wanted out of this room. 

He still sat though, if he left this room he would probably just walk back to his desk and look through something on his phone. Which would most certainly draw people back to him for more conversation, they’d probably think he was looking at something interesting, or at least they would ask him if he was. Any excuse to strike up chatter about Mahiru’s wedding again. 

And even as much as he didn’t want to think about it, he was dwelling on the fact that Mahiru didn’t talk to him about picking out a wedding dress yet.

Hajime thought that he should probably just go talk to her about it. The faster it was settled the sooner he wouldn’t have to think about it anymore, right? It would be the easiest solution anyways. But he had to admit he didn’t exactly want to talk to Mahiru about it yet. Did he feel a sense of betrayal, maybe? He was the man of honor, wasn’t he supposed to know things before the bridesmaids? Or at least know things at around the same time as them right? 

Maybe Mahiru just mentioned it when she asked them to be her bridesmaids? That wouldn’t be so bad. But then, why didn’t she mention it when she asked him? 

Hajime was close to losing himself further into an ugly spiral of thought when he heard Mahiru in the hallway. 

“... Hiyoko we have to sign a prenup sooner rather than later!” She was whispering, if only to stop her from yelling. She sounded exhausted, if not just tired. “Yeah, I get that you’re busy with your show and I know that you think all your dancers are trash! But we can’t keep putting this off.” Mahiru said, exhaling loudly at the end of her sentence. 

A thump rattled through the air as Mahiru aggressively leaned against the wall. “Okay, okay. We’ll go see someone about this prenup as soon as you’re not as busy with your show.” Hajime could just imagine her rubbing her eyes with her left hand, he assumed her right hand was holding her phone. “Did you pick a third bridesmaid yet?” 

Hajime didn’t think he would be able to slip away. Mahiru would see him try and leave if he did, but he didn’t feel the greatest just sitting at the table listening. Something about this felt like he was willingly eavesdropping, like he went and stationed himself here to maybe catch something. He wasn’t sure what he would catch though, all it sounded like was that Mahiru was stressed and frustrated.

“No, you can’t ask Sonia! Yeah, I know she would probably love to be your bridesmaid but she’s already being our wedding planner!” Mahiru sighed. “Fine, fine you can ask her. But don’t put that much pressure on her, okay?” She paused. “Stop it, you know she probably has something else to do even if you wouldn’t consider it important.” The stress seemed to melt away from Mahiru’s voice, and a certain playfulness and amusement laced itself in there instead. 

Mahiru said something about seeing Hiyoko later, and that she hopes that her day goes smoothly. She was hanging up the phone as she walked into the breakroom. Mahiru rolled her neck around, cracking it loudly. She didn’t seem to even notice Hajime was sitting there at the table until she started to walk over to it. She took a seat at the table anyways. Even though Mahiru sat where Ibuki once sat, the feeling of the room could not be anymore different. 

“Rough phone call?” Hajime asked, trying his best to make his tone as light as he could. He had almost just decided to lead with the topic that was seemingly boring a hole into his mind. It was almost like fate had decided for Mahiru to just have the correct timing as to walk into the room right as Hajime was chewing himself up about it. But Hajime would have never considered himself an opportunist. 

Mahiru gave a laugh that sounded more like a hard push of air. “Not as rough as it could be.” She gave a smile that didn’t seem really sad, or happy. But it didn’t feel void of any emotion either. “I can’t blame it all on Hiyoko either, it's pretty irresponsible to want to get married in three months.” Her sentence ended with an eye roll. “But I know we have to get stuff that we don’t really want to do over with faster because of that!”

Hajime shrugged, he didn’t really know much about all the planning that went into a wedding, and to be honest he didn’t care to learn more than he needed to. 

“Oh!” Mahiru said suddenly, which Hajime was grateful for. He wasn’t sure what he would say in the current direction of the conversation. “I have a favor to ask you, two actually. Sorry, I know it's pretty unreliable for me to ask you on such short notice.” Mahiru usually didn’t ask favors at all, and she certainly didn’t ask them on short notice if she had to even ask for one. This whole wedding situation must be getting her more and more frazzled. Hajime guessed that one of the favors would be the answer to his worries about asking about the wedding dress situation, and he was loving that those worries were short lived. He didn’t have a clue on what the other one would be.

Hajime didn’t seem to reply fast enough for Mahiru, as she started up talking again. “So I’m expecting you, as my man of honor, to come help pick my wedding dress with me this weekend. I know you don’t care about fashion, but this is part of the duties of being in a bridal party.” Mahiru spoke sternly, as if Hajime would try and object. He wouldn’t, he knew he was going to have to do stuff like that when he agreed. Mahiru softened the statement with a smile though. “I know it’s short notice. But this next favor is even shorter notice.” 

“Did you break something and want me to try and fix it so you don’t have to find the handyman?” Hajime said as jokingly as he could, but he knew that wasn’t going to be the favor at all. There was too much of a sense of firmness rather than just her general annoyance for it to be that.

* * *

The rest of the day went smoother than the beginning of it did. Hajime wasn’t sure if less people came to bother him, or if he was just more open to talking now that he was able to chat with Mahiru for a minute. He was sure he didn’t care either way. 

Mahiru’s second favor wasn’t necessarily a hard one, as much as it would be another time consuming one. Hajime didn’t outright agree to it anyways, but he hadn’t agreed to attend her first one either. She just trusted that Hajime would be reliable enough to do it, and Hajime would do it. 

It was more of a favor for her fiancee than it was for Mahiru herself though, and that’s what surprised Hajime. 

Hiyoko was a ballet teacher, and either a rather high end or really good one at that, this was a fact that Mahiru had presented in the conversation like Hajime already knew this but needed a reminder. Hajime was certain he did not know this, but he was also certain he could have forgotten this due to not really caring. The show that Mahiru had mentioned on her phone call was ballet production that Hiyoko was not as proud of her dancers, as she could have been. Mahiru explained that Hiyoko wanted members of her audience on their opening night to be what she described as spies. She wanted people that would serve as people that would come backstage for her afterwards to tear the performance to shreds, without placing any blame on Hiyoko herself. 

Hajime knew nothing of ballet training, which Mahiru knew. But she explained that Hiyoko wanted more quantity of critiques rather than quality. Hajime wasn’t sure that tearing apart people’s confidence was a good way to get them to perform better in the future, but he wouldn’t turn down Mahiru when she was counting on him. So he agreed to go, even before Mahiru had mentioned that the show was later that evening. 

Which was fine for Hajime, he had no plans for the evening, But, Mahiru didn’t want just Hajime to come to the production. No, no, no, she wanted Hajime to bring along his new friend. Although he was convinced as ever that Mahiru was certain that Hajime’s new friend was not just a friend. He wasn’t sure why she thought that though, he hadn’t even mentioned their last outing to her. Not that there was anything to skew her thoughts further that way in said outing. 

Hajime would consider Mahiru an opportunist. 

But he didn’t promise Mahiru that he would bring along Nagito. Hajime wasn’t certain that Nagito didn’t have anything to do that evening, and Hajime wouldn’t try and force him to cancel his plans if he did. 

Hajime also wasn’t sure he wanted to see Nagito again, well see him again this soon. Hajime wanted to see him again. That part was certain. But he didn’t want to come off as clingy, Nagito had other stuff he had or wanted to do in the city most likely. Maybe he was finding other people to hang out with as well, Hajime certainly didn’t want to force Nagito into only having one friend. 

But something deep inside Hajime told him that Nagito wouldn’t have anything else to do. 

So he asked him anyways, against what Hajime was thinking of as his better judgement. Besides, as much as he was warming up to Nagito, he felt like there was something slightly off about him that he just couldn’t place. 

He actually had sent him a text while he was still at work, so it didn’t take long for Mahiru to find out that Nagito had accepted. 

Guess that took away any element of surprise Hajime was going for, but that was only an afterthought. 

Mahiru had said plenty more to him about how to behave and how formal to dress so he could relay it back to Nagito to him after she found out. 

But in all honesty, Hajime didn’t mind having a conversation with her that didn’t revolve around her wedding at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, so I know its been a while since I last updated and I'm sorry about that. I just hate this chapter so, so much that as much as I worked on it and tried to make myself like it more I just couldn't? And that really discouraged me from updating this fic but I feel like as clunky and bad as this chapter may be its better than me abandoning the whole fic and never looking at it again? I'm not a very confident writer, and I barely even look back to edit stuff so this really just made me hate this whole thing? Quality drops a lot here and I'm sorry. I know this is a long note, but if you're still reading I really am thankful for that. I hope this chapter didn't drive you away from the whole fic. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I just kinda like got this idea and then I wanted to write it or like at least the first chapter of it. I just love like typical everyday settings? I don't know. This is really self indulgent and it really breaks "show don't tell", but I enjoyed writing it. This is poorly edited because I got tired. I'll probably continue it, don't know how often updates will be. But if you even got to this little note, it means a lot to me. Thank you.


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